Hiding the mouse cursor does not work

[emdete]

Qubes OS version (e.g., R3.2):

3.2

Affected TemplateVMs (e.g., fedora-23, if applicable):

---

Expected behavior:

if a program requests the mouse cursor is hidden (very useful for slideshows, viewing videos or even in the terminal (rxvt with pointerBlank))

Actual behavior:

mouse pointer still visible

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

use any progranm that tries to hide the pointer

General notes:

this may be a security feature but i don't know why this would increase security so i assume it's more a missing feature like #2642?

[andrewdavidwong]

this may be a security feature but i don't know why this would increase security

If this were enabled, would it allow a single compromised VM to "DoS" the whole system by hiding the cursor system-wide?

@marmarek: What do you think? Feature or bug?

[andrewdavidwong]

this may be a security feature but i don't know why this would increase security

If this were enabled, would it allow a single compromised VM to "DoS" the whole system by hiding the cursor system-wide?

@marmarek: What do you think? Feature or bug?

[marmarek]

Hiding mouse cursor system-wide is no-go, exactly for the reason @andrewdavidwong said. But there may be an option to hide a cursor when mouse is inside that [requesting] VM window. Probably can be useful together with allowing fullscreen windows. Related to #1551, with similar impact security-wise. Actually #1551 could be used to implement this one - set cursor "shape" to fully transparent one.

One more thing requiring substantial knowledge of X11 protocol...

[marmarek]

Hiding mouse cursor system-wide is no-go, exactly for the reason @andrewdavidwong said. But there may be an option to hide a cursor when mouse is inside that [requesting] VM window. Probably can be useful together with allowing fullscreen windows. Related to #1551, with similar impact security-wise. Actually #1551 could be used to implement this one - set cursor "shape" to fully transparent one.

One more thing requiring substantial knowledge of X11 protocol...

[Zig-03]

Same here on Qubes R.4.0

[Zig-03]

Same here on Qubes R.4.0