Bugs when connecting from windows to linux

I've used team viewer throughout the duration of my PhD, mostly from windows (10) to windows (7) operating systems and it has worked flawlessly. Now at Uni I've moved to Ubuntu (16) and it works mostly but there are a few problems.

Black screen. Sometimes when I leave my work computer on for an extended period of time with the intention of working from home, the screen will go black (presumably the screen saver) and TeamViewer refuses to exit the black screen.
No mouse. Often, and at random, the mouse will disappear from the screen when using my remote computer from home. The mouse usually comes back after an unpredictible but prolonged amount of time

I really like TeamViewer and would not like to switch, is there anything I can do to fix these bugs?

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DanielStm

About that mouse: TeamViewer replaces the local mouse cursor with the image of the remote cursor. I believe what you are describing is, that it is replaced with an empty (=broken) copy of the remote cursor. In the menu, you can toggle to see the actual remote cursor (as part of the displayed image). Usually, this would mean you see two cursors. In the case that the local is broken, you should still see the other. Anyway... I think this has be resolved in the Host.

You never need to reboot your box because of TeamViewer. Hey, after all this is Linux, not Windows If you believe TeamViewer is messed up, just do

teamviewer daemon restart

# Host only: if it still does not behave, do
teamviewer daemon stop
teamviewer ps

# if there are still processes listed (TeamViewer, TeamViewer_Desktop)
# kill them with
kill -9 <pid>
# and then again
teamviewer daemon start

Actually, it would be interesting to know if that resolves your black screen problem. If it does not, either the system provides wrong information to TeamViewer, or the problem is not the screensaver itself, but rather that it goes in a deeper sleep state. As I said, if you had the problem and you know the time it occurred, send a feedback from within TeamViewer and attach log files.

CiaranWelsh

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for the quick and detailed response. Yes, in fact all of the time I only need incoming connections so I'll give your TeamViewer Host a try.

To answer some of your questions. The mouse becomes invisible but also unresponsive. Its like its not there at all. The problem is not the internet connection (as far as I can tell) since loading web pages still works. When you move the cursor to the menu bar at the top of the screen (aka back on my home (client) computer) I get a cursor back but that is just my home cursor. Next time it happens I'll look for thebutton to see if it makes any difference.

The black screen I think is the screen saver that never awakens. I notice the problem occures more when I leave my work computer on for extended periods of time. In fact the only time I reboot these days is when team viewer wants a reboot.

Typing `$ lsb_release -sd` into the terminal gives me `Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS` if thats any help. I appreciate these things are difficult. If you need any other information from me just let me know.

DanielStm

Dear Ciaran,

what you can do is give us more details. I assume you are using the standard TeamViewer? If, most of the time, you only need incoming connections, please try our TeamViewer Host package, where the current development is focused on. (You can still start a full TeamViewer by downloading the TAR package and run it directly when needed)

The Host is a native package that aims to increase system compatibility and integration with every update.

No mouse: This sounds strange. Is it just not visible? That should not be a big problem, as your LOCAL cursor should always be visible and clicks should work. Anyway, there is an option in the toolbar to toggle the remote cursor. Does that help? Does reconnecting help?

Black screen: This leaves a lot of room for guesswork. If you seriously want to know what happens, then verify in person what is happening on the remote side when the screen is "black". Is it really black? Is it just locked? Screensaver? Screen in power-saving-mode, X11 actually not rendering anything? Then click on the feedback button link in the Host, attach log files and refer to this post.

Improvements in this area are important to us, but they are also rather tricky. Every distribution, every desktop environment, every desktop manager (lightdm, gdm) and sometimes every release brings their own surprises, bugs and philosophy of how things are supposed to work. I assume you're referring to Ubuntu/Unity. As Unity has been cancelled, we'll probably focus on other desktops. Although it is not my personal favorite, I'd assume that gnome3 should become our best-supported desktop environment as it is the default on many distributions and will again be the default on Ubuntu.