[vfio-users] VM loses mouse

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Tue, 2017-04-25 at 11:45 +0000, Christopher Thompson wrote:
> This sounds like the PS/2 driver/emulated hardware controller gets itself in knots. PS/2 isn't hot plug, so if something goes wrong it's generally stuffed until a reboot, which sounds like your issue.

Yes, that would fit with what I'm seeing.

> One common option is to use Synergy, which passes the keyboard and mouse over the network, you set up the synergy service running on the Linux host, with it configured to map an edge of the screen to your Windows VM, then when the Windows VM is running and the synergy client connects you can move the mouse over that edge of the screen and it will appear on Windows (if you have multiple monitors this looks like the mouse seamlessly goes from one screen to the other).
> 
> Keyboard focus follows whatever system the mouse is active on. To pass the mouse back just take it back off the same screen edge. The edge->target machine relationship is programmable so you can have all edges go to the same machine, or some go to different machines, etc.
> 
> Not ideal, but maybe this could be an acceptable workaround?

I did look at Synergy (not Synchronicity :-) before going for the
hardware switch but their website says explicitly that it's not capable
of switching displays, i.e. is not a kb/mouse/video substitute. The
focus seems to be on sharing kb/mouse between multiple hosts, each with
its own display. However I can see it may be possible to set it up the
way I want and combine with the HDMI switch as host and guest each
think they have their own display. I'd be more inclined to try it if
there was a trial version, but there doesn't seem to be.

> It's probably also worth someone investigating the PS/2 code in KVM/QEMU, if you feel like compiling it yourself then you could investigate yourself where the mouse gets dropped.

Something to think about I guess ...

poc