"Buster" on Fujitsu Siemens, mouse pointers are very tall.

[MerleyDelboy]

Installed "Buster" on two old "386" laptops which I am trying to resurrect for my grandchildren to use. A Fujisu Siemens Amilo PRO V2085 with 1.5GB memory and an FS Amilo Mini UI3520 with only 1GB.

SORRY - ONLY ON THE AMILO PRO of these machines, the mouse pointers (cursors) are very tall, I figure they are about 10 times higher than they should be, the width seems to be normal, so you get a tall thin thing on screen and have to position some invisible top of it at the item you want to click on. It is just about workable but I wanted to try to fix it.
I've run through "google" searches in as many ways as I can think of - including advanced searches - and found a guy called Malte Forkel in Berlin who had the same problem on other FS machines back in 2018, he posted an email on debian-user@lists.debian.org but seems to have had no response until I contacted him a couple of weeks ago.

I looked through man pages and tried 'info' and also searched this forum but found nothing about this problem. As a bit of background, the weird mouse cursor appears during the installation phase and persists once the install is complete, it wasn't there on ubuntu or fedora which I had installed previously. I was looking around the system at things I've not played with before and came across the option to switch the display screen into Portrait mode, whereupon the mouse cursors were completely normal. Switch back to Landscape mode screen and I have the very stretched mouse cursors back. I tried looking for methods to review the cursor definitions - or even create my own - but this looks to be a very complex (and maybe not too well defined) process. As an alternative, I installed the "crystalcursors" package 1.1.1-14 on the one machine, they were quite pretty but exhibited exactly the same fault.

I suspect the problem here is related some default setting in the BIOS which is being kept in place, I must admit that I've not yet looked for firmware or driver updates which may be applicable to these machines (sorry), and I've not tried to do anything with the Windows driver disk which I have (it looked OK under /XP which was installed when I got the machines).

Because it has more information than I've included above, I will include Malte's post here:-

Hi,

I have installed buster an an old FSC Primergy Econel 50. The GNOME
desktop works, I can open applications without freezing the machine (as
opposed to stretch), but all cursors are stretched by a factor of four.
Between each line of the cursor image, there are three background lines.

The kernel is 4.18.0-1-686-pae, the X Server is 1.20.1, it uses the KMS
driver i915, version 1.6.0 20180514. The graphics controller is
identified by lspci as

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation E7221 Integrated
Graphics Controller (rev 04) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Fujitsu Technology Solutions E7221 Integrated
Graphics Controller
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 11
Memory at f0000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K]
I/O ports at 1000
Memory at e0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Memory at f0080000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K]
[virtual] Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: [d0] Power Management version 2
Kernel modules: i915

What should I do? If this is a bug, I wouldn't even know which package
to file a bug report against.

Thanks,
Malte

I know that this post may be of limited interest now as I am several releases behind the mainstream, and there will not be too much interest in fixing problem in the i386 versions, but if anyone is willing to offer suggestions, I'm happy to try things out. I'm retired but I have worked with system software (mostly in assembler) since 1966 across many systems and languages and I've played around with Linux for several years, so I'm not a complete newbie. I try to recycle a lot of stuff and there are many quality laptops out there which will end up at the tip if no-one converts them to Linux and puts them to good use, that's my primary aim.

Thanks in anticipation. Derek

[sgosnell]

The cursor theme and size is determined by the desktop environment. What DE are you using?

[stevepusser]

Please provide hardware and driver information similar or better than the example you quoted. I recommend you install inxi and give us the result (in code tags) of

Code: Select all

inxi -Fxxz

in the terminal.

[MerleyDelboy]

The cursor theme and size is determined by the desktop environment. What DE are you using?

Thanks for your interest, I'm using the gnome version that came with the standard 10.6.0 install.

I guess that is also equivalent to what runs during the installation process. Which DE would you suggest?

[MerleyDelboy]

Please provide hardware and driver information similar or better than the example you quoted. I recommend you install inxi and give us the result (in code tags) of

Code: Select all

inxi -Fxxz

in the terminal.

Hi Steve,
Thanks for your interest. I got this from lspci:-
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller (rev 04)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 04)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 04)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 04)
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 04)
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 04)
00:1d.3 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 04)
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 04)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev d4)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 04)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) SATA Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 04)
06:05.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG [Calexico2] Network Connection (rev 05)
06:07.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8169 PCI Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 10)
06:09.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx21/x515 Cardbus Controller
06:09.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
06:09.3 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments PCIxx21 Integrated FlashMedia Controller
06:09.4 SD Host controller: Texas Instruments PCI6411/6421/6611/6621/7411/7421/7611/7621 Secure Digital Controller

....and this from inxi -Fxxz

System: Host: AmiloPro Kernel: 4.19.0-12-686-pae i686 bits: 32 compiler: gcc v: 8.3.0 Console: tty 3 dm: GDM3
Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
Machine: Type: Laptop System: FUJITSU SIEMENS product: AMILO Pro V2085 v: 20 serial: <filter> Chassis: type: 10 v: A2040
serial: <filter>
Mobo: FUJITSU SIEMENS model: AMILO Pro V2085 serial: <filter> BIOS: Phoenix v: R01-A1I date: 02/18/2006
Battery: ID-1: BAT0 charge: 84.6 Wh condition: 4288.6/288.2 Wh (1488%) volts: 10.6/65.5 model: SMP-SS22 M40 serial: <filter>
status: Charging
CPU: Topology: Single Core model: Intel Pentium M bits: 32 type: MCP arch: M Dothan rev: 8 L2 cache: 2048 KiB
flags: nx pae sse sse2 bogomips: 2128
Speed: 1067 MHz min/max: 800/1733 MHz Core speed (MHz): 1: 1067
Graphics: Device-1: Intel Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics vendor: Wistron driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0
chip ID: 8086:2592
Display: tty server: X.org 1.20.4 driver: i915 compositor: gnome-shell tty: 160x50
Message: Advanced graphics data unavailable in console. Try -G --display
Audio: Device-1: Intel 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW High Definition Audio vendor: Wistron driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel
bus ID: 00:1b.0 chip ID: 8086:2668
Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.19.0-12-686-pae
Network: Device-1: Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG [Calexico2] Network driver: N/A port: 18e0 bus ID: 06:05.0 chip ID: 8086:4220
Device-2: Realtek RTL8169 PCI Gigabit Ethernet vendor: Wistron driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 3000 bus ID: 06:07.0
chip ID: 10ec:8169
IF: enp6s7 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Drives: Local Storage: total: 469.40 GiB used: 5.85 GiB (1.2%)
ID-1: /dev/mmcblk3 model: SA04G size: 3.64 GiB serial: <filter>
ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: Hitachi model: HTS725050A9A364 size: 465.76 GiB speed: 1.5 Gb/s serial: <filter>
Partition: ID-1: / size: 22.79 GiB used: 4.52 GiB (19.8%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-0
ID-2: /boot size: 235.3 MiB used: 81.2 MiB (34.5%) fs: ext2 dev: /dev/sda1
ID-3: /home size: 330.18 GiB used: 230.3 MiB (0.1%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-4
ID-4: /tmp size: 1.80 GiB used: 5.7 MiB (0.3%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-3
ID-5: /var size: 9.10 GiB used: 1.03 GiB (11.3%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-2
ID-6: swap-1 size: 1.49 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/dm-1
Sensors: Message: No sensors data was found. Is sensors configured?
Info: Processes: 157 Uptime: 1h 15m Memory: 1.46 GiB used: 655.0 MiB (43.7%) Init: systemd v: 241 runlevel: 5 Compilers:
gcc: N/A Shell: bash v: 5.0.3 running in: tty 3 inxi: 3.0.32

I think I've done that all OK, happy to be corrected and present it differently if necessary.

Please note that I've edited my original message to clarify that the tall cursor only happens on the AmiloPro, not on the Mini vrsion.

Regards,

Derek

[sgosnell]

The cursor theme and size is determined by the desktop environment. What DE are you using?

Thanks for your interest, I'm using the gnome version that came with the standard 10.6.0 install.

I guess that is also equivalent to what runs during the installation process. Which DE would you suggest?

Choice of DE is purely personal, use whatever you prefer. It's just that different DEs have different methods of configuring things. I haven't used Gnome in years, so I'm afraid I have no further advice than to poke around in the settings.

[stevepusser]

Message: Advanced graphics data unavailable in console. Try -G --display

This is odd. You need to run inxi in a terminal within the desktop environment, not in a console login session, to get graphics data data. If you are using gnome-terminal already within GNOME, things are getting very odd.

[pendrachken]

Message: Advanced graphics data unavailable in console. Try -G --display

This is odd. You need to run inxi in a terminal within the desktop environment, not in a console login session, to get graphics data data. If you are using gnome-terminal already within GNOME, things are getting very odd.

I think things are a bit odd, INXI seems to think it's in GNOME shell already, within X.org, unless I'm reading it wrong:

Code: Select all

Display: tty server: X.org 1.20.4 driver: i915 compositor: gnome-shell tty: 160x50

I'm thinking something is kinda screwy with his ACPI, affecting GFX among other things:

Code: Select all

Battery: ID-1: BAT0 charge: 84.6 Wh condition: 4288.6/288.2 Wh (1488%) volts: 10.6/65.5 model: SMP-SS22 M40 serial: <filter>
status: Charging

Otherwise I would be very, very worried if that battery was charged to almost 1,500%...

[MerleyDelboy]

Sorry guys, I did run those in a console terminal (not as smart as I thought I was), here they are run in a gnome terminal.

lspci
QUOTE
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller (rev 04)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 04)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 04)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 04)
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 04)
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 04)
00:1d.3 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 04)
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 04)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev d4)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 04)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) SATA Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 04)
06:05.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG [Calexico2] Network Connection (rev 05)
06:07.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8169 PCI Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 10)
06:09.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx21/x515 Cardbus Controller
06:09.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
06:09.3 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments PCIxx21 Integrated FlashMedia Controller
06:09.4 SD Host controller: Texas Instruments PCI6411/6421/6611/6621/7411/7421/7611/7621 Secure Digital Controller
UNQUOTE

inxi
QUOTE
System: Host: AmiloPro Kernel: 4.19.0-12-686-pae i686 bits: 32 compiler: gcc v: 8.3.0 Desktop: Gnome 3.30.2 wm: gnome-shell
dm: GDM3 Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
Machine: Type: Laptop System: FUJITSU SIEMENS product: AMILO Pro V2085 v: 20 serial: <filter> Chassis: type: 10 v: A2040
serial: <filter>
Mobo: FUJITSU SIEMENS model: AMILO Pro V2085 serial: <filter> BIOS: Phoenix v: R01-A1I date: 02/18/2006
Battery: ID-1: BAT0 charge: 84.2 Wh condition: 4288.6/288.2 Wh (1488%) volts: 10.6/65.5 model: SMP-SS22 M40 serial: <filter>
status: Charging
CPU: Topology: Single Core model: Intel Pentium M bits: 32 type: MCP arch: M Dothan rev: 8 L2 cache: 2048 KiB
flags: nx pae sse sse2 bogomips: 1596
Speed: 800 MHz min/max: 800/1733 MHz Core speed (MHz): 1: 800
Graphics: Device-1: Intel Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics vendor: Wistron driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0
chip ID: 8086:2592
Display: wayland server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: i915 compositor: gnome-shell resolution: 1280x800~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 7.0 128 bits) v: 3.3 Mesa 18.3.6 compat-v: 3.1 direct render: Yes
Audio: Device-1: Intel 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW High Definition Audio vendor: Wistron driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel
bus ID: 00:1b.0 chip ID: 8086:2668
Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.19.0-12-686-pae
Network: Device-1: Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG [Calexico2] Network driver: N/A port: 18e0 bus ID: 06:05.0 chip ID: 8086:4220
Device-2: Realtek RTL8169 PCI Gigabit Ethernet vendor: Wistron driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 3000 bus ID: 06:07.0
chip ID: 10ec:8169
IF: enp6s7 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Drives: Local Storage: total: 469.40 GiB used: 5.92 GiB (1.3%)
ID-1: /dev/mmcblk3 model: SA04G size: 3.64 GiB serial: <filter>
ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: Hitachi model: HTS725050A9A364 size: 465.76 GiB speed: 1.5 Gb/s serial: <filter>
Partition: ID-1: / size: 22.79 GiB used: 4.57 GiB (20.0%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-0
ID-2: /boot size: 235.3 MiB used: 81.2 MiB (34.5%) fs: ext2 dev: /dev/sda1
ID-3: /home size: 330.18 GiB used: 232.8 MiB (0.1%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-4
ID-4: /tmp size: 1.80 GiB used: 5.7 MiB (0.3%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-3
ID-5: /var size: 9.10 GiB used: 1.04 GiB (11.4%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-2
ID-6: swap-1 size: 1.49 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/dm-1
Sensors: Message: No sensors data was found. Is sensors configured?
Info: Processes: 174 Uptime: 4m Memory: 1.46 GiB used: 573.3 MiB (38.2%) Init: systemd v: 241 runlevel: 5 Compilers:
gcc: N/A Shell: bash v: 5.0.3 running in: gnome-terminal inxi: 3.0.32
UNQUOTE

[maf]

MerleyDelboy quoted my question to the Debian mailing list in his original post. I'm still experiencing the same problem on my FSC Primergy Econel 50. Here is an image of what the cursor looks like:

(broken cursor)

And for comparison, this is what it should look like:

(standard cursor)

Note: The image links do not work for me. Some advice would be appreciated

I ran two tests with Debian Live 10.6.0. In GNOME, the cursor still is broken. In KDE, the cursor is fine.

Here is the output of inxi from Debian Live 10.6.0 GNOME

Code: Select all

user@debian:~$ inxi -Fxxz
System:
  Host: debian Kernel: 4.19.0-11-686 i686 bits: 32 compiler: gcc v: 8.3.0 
  Desktop: Gnome 3.30.2 wm: gnome-shell dm: GDM3 
  Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) 
Machine:
  Type: Server System: FUJITSU SIEMENS product: PRIMERGY ECONEL 50 v: N/A 
  serial: <filter> Chassis: type: 17 v: EC50F serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: FUJITSU SIEMENS model: D1859 v: S26361-D1859 serial: <filter> 
  BIOS: FUJITSU SIEMENS // Phoenix v: 4.06 Rev. 1.03.1859 date: 06/21/2005 
CPU:
  Topology: Single Core model: Intel Pentium 4 bits: 32 type: MT 
  arch: Netburst Smithfield rev: 1 L2 cache: 1024 KiB 
  flags: nx pae sse sse2 sse3 bogomips: 13566 
  Speed: 3392 MHz min/max: N/A Core speeds (MHz): 1: 3392 2: 3392 
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel E7221 Integrated Graphics vendor: Fujitsu Solutions 
  driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 chip ID: 8086:258a 
  Display: wayland server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: i915 compositor: gnome-shell 
  resolution: 1280x1024~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 7.0 128 bits) v: 3.3 Mesa 18.3.6 
  compat-v: 3.1 direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: Creative Labs EMU10k2/CA0100/CA0102/CA10200 [Sound Blaster 
  Audigy Series] 
  driver: snd_emu10k1 v: kernel bus ID: 0b:07.0 chip ID: 1102:0004 
  Device-2: Philips s SAA7146 
  vendor: Technotrend Systemtechnik Technotrend/Hauppauge DVB card rev2.1 
  driver: N/A bus ID: 0b:09.0 chip ID: 1131:7146 
  Device-3: Philips s SAA7146 vendor: TERRATEC Electronic Cinergy 1200 DVB-C 
  driver: budget_av v: kernel bus ID: 0b:0b.0 chip ID: 1131:7146 
  Device-4: Philips s SAA7146 vendor: Technotrend Systemtechnik S2-3200 
  driver: budget_ci dvb bus ID: 0b:0d.0 chip ID: 1131:7146 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.19.0-11-686 
Network:
  Device-1: Broadcom Limited NetXtreme BCM5751 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express 
  vendor: Fujitsu Solutions Scenic W620 driver: tg3 v: 3.137 port: 3400 
  bus ID: 07:00.0 chip ID: 14e4:1677 
  IF: enp7s0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
  Device-2: 3Com 3c905B 100BaseTX [Cyclone] driver: 3c59x v: kernel 
  port: 4000 bus ID: 0b:05.0 chip ID: 10b7:9055 
  IF: enp11s5 state: down mac: <filter> 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 149.18 GiB used: 201.5 MiB (0.1%) 
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST380013AS size: 74.53 GiB 
  speed: <unknown> serial: <filter> temp: 31 C 
  ID-2: /dev/sdb vendor: Seagate model: ST380013AS size: 74.53 GiB 
  speed: <unknown> serial: <filter> temp: 27 C 
  ID-3: /dev/sde type: USB model: CBM Flash Disk size: 120.6 MiB 
  serial: <filter> 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 1.60 GiB used: 201.5 MiB (12.3%) fs: overlay source: ERR-102 
Sensors:
  Message: No sensors data was found. Is sensors configured? 
Info:
  Processes: 163 Uptime: 19m Memory: 3.20 GiB used: 445.5 MiB (13.6%) 
  Init: systemd v: 241 runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 8.3.0 alt: 8 Shell: bash 
  v: 5.0.3 running in: mlterm inxi: 3.0.32 

Update: No improvements in Debian Live 10.7.0.

[MerleyDelboy]

Hi maf,

Looks like I managed to bore everyone to death with this problem. As I guessed, the 32 bit versions are now of little interest.

On the machine which persists with this problem, I've now switched to KDE which, as you say, works ok.

I see that this thread has had several hundred views, so presumably there are other people suffering the problem, but that's the end of it for me.

All the best,

Derek

[maf]

I discovered that the cursor gets distorted if GDM is started automatically (systemctl set-default graphical.target). The cursor is fine if GDM ist started manually (systemctl set-default multi-user.target and startx in a console later on).

Could someone explain the internal differences between the two ways of starting X and how they might affect the cursor?