Mouse click not working in Ubuntu, Xfce and Xubuntu

Question

I have been using Xubuntu and Ubuntu on our older home PC for almost 2 years without much trouble until today when the mouse seemed to not work properly. I can move the pointer around and click but after a while the left and right click does not work. I can hover over a button and clicking shows the visual effect of lowering the button but it won't respond with the action required. It seems to happen sooner when opening a firefox window, but is not restricted to firefox. I have looked on this forum and others for advice and I have tried the following:

compiz --replace
metacity --replace

I have even reinstalled the Xserver. I checked the ximput to see if the buttons were not assigned but everything seems OK. I am on the 3.2.0-54 kernel and running Xubuntu/Ubuntu 12.01. And I have tried different mice on different usb ports and they all do the same thing. Help will be much appreciated.

Solution

A distribution upgrade was what was needed:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

I don't know how but my previous kernel must have been corrupted.

Comments

[Jacques MALAPRADE]

It seems to be only when I start firefox from the cairo-dock.

[landroni]

Please add the firefox & cairo-dock bit in the original question by editing it. I'm wondering what happens if you open firefox from the xfce4-panel; do you still get the non-functional mouse? Maybe it is the cairo-dock thingy that bugs out and botches the mouse.

[Jacques MALAPRADE]

I now noticed it does the same thing in ubuntu and xubuntu so not just a cairo-dock problem. I came across a site suggesting I should add the following to the firefox shortcut: GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=TRUE firefox. I have tried adding it to the firefox.desktop file as well as the /usr/bin/firefox file but they all seem to not work. I .desktop I added it to the line starting with Exec=.... I am currently testing something and it seems to be promising that is to add " GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=TRUE firefox " as a env variable before starting firefox. It seems to work but needs more test. Will get back...

[Jacques MALAPRADE]

Ok tried by rebooting and using the firefox from menu and running from terminal works but not trough cairo-dock. Rebooting again anf trying the env variable method again to see if firefox works.

[landroni]

From what I hear, this issue is only related to Firefox (whichever the DE) and not in other apps, correct?

[Jacques MALAPRADE]

Yes it seems to be only with firefox. I will be testing some more. I can confirm that setting the env variable does not always help. It worked for a while and then stopped.

[Jacques MALAPRADE]

OK. I can confirm it happens in other applications too. Although it seems to happen sooner in firefox for whatever reason. I just opened lo_calc, and a few others but as soon as I closed the mines game the mouse clicking does not work. It will show the button help message and when I click it shows how the button is pressed down, but there is no action taking place. I hope to change the original question above to include all these once we can narrow it down a bit.

[landroni]

Also, if you confirm that this happens in all DEs, then consider modifying the tags and title, too. Quick question: is the mouse click not working, or the mouse disappearing (and you don't really know where it is when you make a click). And did check whether the issue is not hardware-related; maybe a faulty mouse?

[Jacques MALAPRADE]

I can confirm it is not the mouse as I have tried other mice with the same problem. The pointer does not disappear. It is just the click action that does not take place. I can move the pointer around but can't click with an action. I also confirm it happens in Ubuntu as well.

[Jacques MALAPRADE]

I guess if I don't get any help from the community I would be forced to reinstall everything..... A pity.

[landroni]

I understand that the issue is.. distracting, but only 4 days of waiting for an answer is not that long. If you want to get better help, as I already suggested, improve the tags (for example, this question doesn't seem to be related to Xfce only). Also you could improve the formatting of the original question; use paragraphs. For code use appropriate formatting (e.g. compiz --replace). Otherwise it's difficult to read. Try to improve your chances of getting a useful answer by improving the question.

[Jacques MALAPRADE]

Your response is appreciated. I changed the code where I could. I initially posted Xfce put subsequently turned out to be in Ubuntu as well. I don't see what else I can do really, but I have to work on the PC and for that reason 4 days is quite long.

[Ubuntu_enthusiast]

Didn't work for me. I did a fresh install of Xubuntu 20.04 and I still have the same issue.