Public bug reported:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1137700

This bug started for me and for others on the above thread after
installing Ubuntu 9.04.  Most, if not all, people with this problem are
using a wireless logitech mouse (even someone back in 2005 had a similar
problem and was using a logitech mouse -- see his thread at the bottom).
I think it would be easiest to just copy and paste most of what I wrote
in the forum:

While the mouse appears to be freely moving around the screen, it is
actually getting stuck inside control objects (button, tab, edit box,
menu item, slider bar, etc). The mouse cursor appears to move around the
screen just fine, but when I click, nothing happens (because the mouse
is still clicking inside the area in which it is actually trapped -- not
where the cursor appears to be). If I hold the cursor over a hyperlink,
the hyperlink is not underlined like normal and buttons that normally
light up when the cursor is over them fail to do so. If the mouse is
trapped in a slider bar, I can go back and move the slider bar around
with the mouse and it works fine, but I cannot get the focus out of that
control object by using the mouse and cannot use adjacent slider bars
using the mouse. The tab key can be used to move the focus around in
dialog boxes or on webpages and you can type in other fields or use the
arrow keys to move slider bars around, but as soon as you click the
mouse, the focus goes right back to the box or slider bar or whatever
has the mouse trapped. If I click the right mouse button anywhere on the
screen, the pop-up menu that would have come up if I had actually right
clicked on the area where the mouse is trapped comes up with one corner
of the box at the location of the traped (invisible) mouse and not where
the mouse cursor appears to be. You can then left click somewhere to get
rid of that box and the problem is fixed temporarily (until a few more
clicks lands the cursor back in jail somewhere). The menu popping up
seems to free the mouse cursor. If the mouse gets stuck somewhere where
nothing happens when you right click, I can also free the mouse by
closing whatever window has the cursor trapped. ALT + F4 or tabbing to a
close button on a dialog box also frees the cursor. Unfortunately,
sometimes you're at the desktop when the cursor gets trapped in some
random area and right click does nothing and there's no window to close.
In this instance unplugging the mouse and plugging it back in is a last
resort and always works. This also seems to correct this problem for a
very long time, instead of just seconds to minutes.

I am fairly certain that this is the same problem that most of the
people on this thread are having and I am also fairly certain that the
problem is that the mouse (or the mouse's focus) is getting trapped,
even though it appears to be moving freely around the screen, and can
only be freed by causing another window to steal the focus (like a pop-
up menu when right clicking), closing the window that has trapped the
mouse, or unplugging the usb cord for the mouse. Sometimes right
clicking doesn't work, but using the keyboard button that does the same
ting as the right mouse button (looks like a menu with a mouse cursor
over it) DOES work and vice versa (not sure why).

The frequency of this problem is analogous to someone with the flu
coughing.  When you've got the flu, you cough randomly, but you go a few
years without the flu and don't cough.  This problem will not occur for
a day or two and then will start happening very frequently until the
mouse is unplugged.  Using any other method described above to solve the
problem is very temporary and the mouse will get stuck again in a matter
of minutes.  After unplugging the mouse and plugging it back in, I'll go
for days without the problem and then it will randomly start occuring
again.  I am not sure what causes this to start happening.  It has
started occurring while using multiple different programs and even when
I don't have a program open and am viewing the desktop.

This problem is extremely frustrating. I hope someone figures out what's
wrong. I keep hoping the new updates that ubuntu installs are going to
fix the problem, but they haven't. Logitech is a pretty common brand of
mouse, so I think this bug would be worthwhile to address.

The exact same thing seems to have happened to someone back in 2005
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=19103

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: firefox-3.0 3.0.10+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.9.04.1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: firefox-3.0
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-server i686

** Affects: ubuntu
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New


** Tags: apport-bug i386

-- 
Mouse focus gets stuck over control objects
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/375905
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