I stumbled across the section of the FAQ ( http://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/FAQ#How_to_change_the_cursor_theme.3F) that states that "The reason your cursor fall-backs to default, over a wibox or the background, is because XCB does not support Xcursor yet." Searching the mailing list brings up conversations about it not working, as well. I found this strange since I've been happily using custom mouse cursors with awesome for years now without issue. The trick I've found to preventing the mouse cursor from being reset is to create a default theme that inherits from the actual theme I want to use, then when the cursor "resets" it does so to cursor that I'm already using.
Perhaps it's only working because of something unique to my system, but I'm attaching the index.theme that I use. Copy it to ~/.icons/default/index.theme and install the gruppled_black cursor theme ( http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Gruppled+Cursors?content=86081) or whatever other cursor theme you'd like (just swap out the inheritance in the default theme) into ~/.icons, as well. Hopefully this works for others and the FAQ can be updated. -- Austin M. Matherne
index.theme
Description: application/theme
