Fight for the Internet 1!

Friday, May 21, 2010

Synergy configuration example

For a year or more, I have been using the program called Synergy to control multiple computers from a single machine with a single keyboard and mouse. Synergy is available for most Linux distributions, but it is also interesting to note the original program has not been upgraded since 2006.

Synergy+ is a maintenance fork for implementing bug fixes to the original Synergy by Chris Schoeneman, which hasn't any source updates or new releases since 2006 (as of writing this). If you experience any odd problems with your Synergy that are not configuration bugs, try using Synergy+ instead.

My configuration of Synergy is slightly more complex than your average one. The main differences are that the top and bottom 5% of each screen are not shared, so you can safely use the buttons and window-controls in each corner without problems of jumping to adjoining screens. Also, I have a Logitech Revolution MX mouse, which has about 9 buttons. I have added mouse button configuration to make sure I can use Thumb buttons for Forward-History and Back-History. (Without this configuration, my machines were disconnecting from each other.)

In this example, I have two screens. Misty is on the Left, and Jenny is one the Right.
section: screens
Jenny:
Misty:
end
section: links
Jenny:
left(10,90) = Misty
Misty:
right(10,90) = Jenny
end
section: options
mousebutton(6) = keystroke(WWWBack)
mousebutton(7) = keystroke(WWWForward)
mousebutton(4) = ;
mousebutton(5) = ;
end

I hope this example configuration file is helpful to any viewers.

(And by the way viewers, connections with Synergy are not encrypted, meaning not secure. It is open to monitoring, so if you type something critical or secret, it can possibly be viewed. To secure Synergy, you should tunnel it through a secure connection, like SSH for example.)

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