[EdLUG] Desktop weird behaviour

[Edinburgh Linux Users Group]

Hi;
I'm using two Dell Mini 9's (Inspiron 910) with Xubuntu 16.04 LTS and today
I noticed some wierd, annoying behaviour.
One has a 16GB ssd and the other an 8GB ssd, both are connected to their
own monitor with an svga cable.
I also have synergy installed, so I only need one keyboard & mouse.

I found I wasn't able to move the pointer between the screens. Even worse
than that, I sometimes clicks were not recognised, or they brought up
unexpected results, such as a right click when I had left clicked. As well
a menu I haven't been able to recreate, for switching between desktops,
when I only have one.
I generally use the 8GB one for watching videos, and the 16GB for saving
the videos to the shared drive, and surfing the web. I had such trouble
doing that, I was about ready to install over the existing system, losing
all my changes and bookmarks.
More strangely, the computers are working okay just now, about 3 hours
later, after I started running clamscan. I regularly run updates and
upgrades, rkhunter, and bleachbit to keep the system working well.

I tried stopping synergy & restarting it, but that didn't solve the problem.
I tried looking for processor hogs with top, but couldn't see anything.
I tried restarting several times, but the same problem would crop up as
soon as I used any application, even just file manager (thunar)
Having a squint at my syslog shows;
/usr/lib/php/sessionclean
is that something to be concerned about? Also this;
Jul 17 13:45:01 xubuntu1 CRON[29977]: (root) CMD (command -v debian-sa1 >
/dev/null && debian-sa1 1 1)

1) anyone know what the original problem was?
2) are there other ways to tell what's happened?
3) is there some malware going round matching this description?

TIA
Keith
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