Taking screenshot saves a black image with the cursor only

Question

Whenever I do a screenshot, it saves a black image with the cursor only. However, if I do a screenshot after an app or Unity freezes, it would save an image in the state when the app or Unity was frozen. I have an ATI Radeon HD 6290 graphics card which uses the proprietary FGLRX experimental beta driver, the other versions of the proprietary drivers (stable, post-release, FireGL) also do the same. Running on Ubuntu 12.04.2.

Solution 1

Switch to tt1 (ctrl + alt + f1) and back to tt7 (ctrl + alt + f7), then take a screenshot. hat workarounds the problem.

Solution 2

It's a known Compiz bug: gnome-screenshot produces black screenshot with only the mouse pointer visible.

One fix mentioned on this forum is to disable Compiz desktop effects. You can disable desktop effects using CompizConfig Settings Manager. Which can be installed with Software Centre or using commandline:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

You can also take a look at other screenshot tools hare: What screenshot tools are available?

Comments

[Jeremy]

I don't use Compiz, since I boot straight to Unity 2D and I have not logged in to the Unity + Compiz environment, but I might look over for that bug too.