Warning on Wayland when I run the `ydotoold` daemon: "WARNING: running xinput against an Xwayland server." "unable to find device pointer:ydotoold virtual device"

[ElectricRCAircraftGuy]

I just built ydotool from commit 57ba7d0 on Ubuntu 22.04.2. ydotoold --version shows v1.0.4-0-g57ba7d0.

When running the Wayland window manager (see how to select X11 vs Wayland in my answer here), I get the following warning when I start the daemon:

WARNING: running xinput against an Xwayland server. See the xinput man page for details.
unable to find device pointer:ydotoold virtual device

What does this mean and what implications does it have? What about unable to find device pointer:ydotoold virtual device? Does that mean I am unable to fully control the mouse with ydotool?

Here is the full command and output:

$ sudo ydotoold --socket-path="$HOME/.ydotool_socket" --socket-own="$(id -u):$(id -g)"
[sudo] password for gabriel: 
Socket path: /home/gabriel/.ydotool_socket
Removing old stale socket
Socket permission: 0600
Socket ownership: UID=1000, GID=1000
READY
WARNING: running xinput against an Xwayland server. See the xinput man page for details.
unable to find device pointer:ydotoold virtual device

Note that pressing Windows + D still works just fine. This will press that key sequence to hide all windows, then it waits 2 seconds and presses it again to show all windows:

YDOTOOL_SOCKET="$HOME/.ydotool_socket" ydotool key 125:1 32:1 32:0 125:0; \
    sleep 2; \
    YDOTOOL_SOCKET="$HOME/.ydotool_socket" ydotool key 125:1 32:1 32:0 125:0

[hrqmonteiro]

No one to look at this?

[Paiusco]

Can you retry that with latest main and see if this still happens @ElectricRCAircraftGuy? Currently don't have a ubuntu machine, but we could try to tackle it

[stele95]

I can confirm that this is still happening when installed with ydotool-git package from AUR which should build on the latest commit

[ElectricRCAircraftGuy]

(I'm still following this but unable to make the time to try it again at this time).

[DmitryDGD]

@Paiusco Manjaro KDE plasma 5.27.11, Wayland. Same thing!

[Paiusco]

@DmitryDGD
oh, but the thing is that you defined the socket for the daemon, you have to do that on the cli as well. Otherwise the client will go for the default path, which is /run/user/...

So the way you started the daemon is fine, but as the last line from ydotool --help says:

Use environment variable YDOTOOL_SOCKET to specify daemon socket

so you should try to run as:
YDOTOOL_SOCKET="$HOME/.ydotool.socket" ydotool type

[Paiusco]

Ok, I tracked this issue introduced by this request: #164.
I need some help from people that has xinput both on X and XWayland real installation as I don't have time to do that now. (I use X and don't have xinput installed. I'll show my XWayland result from a VM)

So maybe it's also desirable to disable the mouse acceleration on XWayland (maybe @ReimuNotMoe can give some inputs here, pun intended), even tho that may only work for that session...

If someone can:

1. start ydotoold
2. run xinput list and post them here

So I can try to get any pattern there... What I can see on my XWayland VM is:

so the property that ydotoold tries to change doesn't exist indeed, and the message makes sense.

---

@ReimuNotMoe questions:

1. Does it make sense to try to disable the mouse acceleration on XWayland? xinput states that:
   

I think we should remove this from XWayland cases... They mention we should use the compositor's tools for it, that may give us a headache, as every compositor will probably have their own way, no?

2. Is the naming always the same for the property on X? I mean this line. Is it always pointer:ydotoold virtual device?

I'll implement a fix once we define what to do

[idsamcom]

@Paiusco
I tried X11 and Wayland using Raspberry Pi4 running Bookworm. Here are the results.

X11:

X11 with a wireless mouse dongle plugged in:

Wayland (same result with or without wireless mouse dongle):

[idsamcom]

It seems that the warning message can be ignored. But I have to follow @jonas73x's comment here to make it work on Wayland. It is weird because everything works on X11 without any changes.

[Paiusco]

@idsamcom thank you for your tests, I've opened #255 to fix it. Tested under wayland and indeed doesn't hurt, so the easiest approach seems to make it silent for now. Hopefully will be merged soon