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Anade
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Contributor

Mouse misbehavior and ungrab problem in a guest on Linux VMware host while using secondary keyboard layout on the host

How to reproduce:

  1. On a Linux host running VMware Workstation 12 Pro, setup two keyboard layouts, e.g.

    setxkbmap -rules evdev -model pc105 -layout us,gb -option -option grp:shifts_toggle

  2. Activate the second layout (in case of the above setting, pressing left and right shift simultaneously will toggle the layouts).
  3. Run any (Windows) VM guest and the symptom(s) will appear.
  4. The symptoms (dis)appear if the layout is toggled back to the first layout (and appear again while the second layout is active).


Symptoms:

  1. The mouse pointer is locked within the guest even though the VMware Tools are installed and running and the PreferencesInputAutomatically grab and ungrab the mouse cursor checkbox is on..
  2. In some guest systems, the mouse generates probably a special kind of Mouse Wheel-Up Events when moving, clicking, or even wheel-scrolling. This influences some dialogs with list-boxes, up-down values, or sliders.

Testing the second symptom in a Windows 10 guest:

Run Windows 10 guest and go to Control Panel → Mouse and select either Pointers, Pointer Options, or Wheel tab and try to change values in the drop-down-menu (Scheme), list-box (Customize), slider (Select a pointer speed), or up-down value (the number of lines for vertical scrolling). The values will all change only up and they are changing even if the mouse pointer is just moving (while the particular setting is selected).

Workaround:

  • Use only one Linux host keyboard layout, or
  • switch to the first keyboard layout. If the second layout is used more often, swap the layout configuration and use the first one.
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