Synergy, a very useful tool

Good companions! ..

In my first post I come to bring you a quick guide to a tool that I have used for a long time, this one is called Synergy. This program allows us to share our keyboard and mouse between several computers, moving from one monitor to another, just by dragging the mouse to the edge of the monitor.

Interesting aspects:

• It is multiplatform! Yes gentlemen, you can cross it by your distro linuxera of taste, as well as the window and / or apple.
• Being using several computers, we can use several programs distributed among our machines without saturating a single processor; In other words, it means that we do not need a "super computer" but can take advantage of several with fewer resources.
• Convenience, just a keyboard and mouse above the desk.
• Share the clipboard (copy and paste text) between computers.

As I told you above, despite being multiplatform, we are going to focus on how to use it in our penguin. In this guide I am going to focus on Debian and its derivatives (Ubuntu, Linux Mint, etc.) for practicality, but I doubt that it will be difficult to migrate it to other distros. We start?

1. Installation:

We can download the latest version from here., or a particular previous version, either beta or stable from this link.

Or, in the case of Debian and derivatives, from their respective repository:

# apt-get install synergy

2. Configuration:

The first step in setting up synergistic is to open the port through which the connections will be made, for default this is port 24800. (in the case of already having it used or simply want to use another, it can be done quietly, only when executing it will have to specify the port to use); this is done with the command iptables:

# iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 24800 -j ACCEPT

What does this?

-A = adds a rule to the chain.
-p = specifies the protocol.
--dport = indicates the destination port.
-j = determines the action.

2.2. Configuration File:

Now with the port open, we proceed to configure synergistic:

With your favorite text editor (in my case vi) we create the file synergy.conf en / etc /

# vi /etc/synergy.conf

Inside it we are going to write the following structure:

section: screens
hostnameDelServidor:
hostnameDelCliente1:
hostnameDelCliente2:
end
section: aliases
hostnameDelServidor:
ipDelServidor
hostnameDelCliente1:
ipDelCliente1
hostnameDelCliente2:
ipDelCliente2
end
section: links
hostnameDelServidor:
right = hostnameDelCliente2
left = hostnameDelCliente1
hostnameDelCliente1:
right = hostnameDelServidor
hostnameDelCliente2:
left = hostnameDelServidor
end

2.2.1. Configuration example:

// Order: Left —-> Right

// Hostname: PC1 (server) —-> PC2 (client)

// IP: 10.9.0.1 —-> 10.9.0.2

section: screens

PC1:

PC2:

end

section: aliases

PC1:

10.9.0.1

PC2:

10.9.0.2

end

section: links

PC1:

right = PC2

PC2:

left = PC1

end

2.2.2. Why use a text-based configuration?

Well, the first reason is that you don't really have a choice, unless you are using some version with a graphical interface. Second, it gives you more control. An interface cannot create advanced settings, such as a non-reciprocal connection. An example of a non-reciprocal connection is if you go to the right of monitor A you get to monitor B, but if you go then to the left of monitor B you get to monitor C instead of again to monitor A as it would be in a connection configuration reciprocal.

Other considerations:

• These settings are easier to share with other people.
• You can have more than one armed configuration, for different cases. (as it can be with a notebook that you use it in various places)

2.3. Starting Server / Client

2.3.1. Start Server

Once the relevant configurations have been made, it is as simple as putting the following in the console:

  $ synergys

Notice the 's' at the end, this refers to server.

If we want to see that it has loaded the configuration successfully and something more than info, when starting it, put the following:

  $ synergys -d DEBUG

2.3.2. Start Client

Once the server is started on the machine from which we will use our peripherals (keyboard and mouse), we start the rest of the machines involved as clients; putting in the terminal:

  $ synergyc -f IPdelServidor

Notice the 'c' in client, and where does it say ServerIP put the corresponding IP, if we focus on the example case (see 2.2.1) it would be:

  $ synergyc -f 10.9.0.1

–If we want to see its behavior and connections with the server:

  $ synergyc -f IPdelServidor -d DEBUG

–If we had specified a different port than the one used by default (24800), we put:

  $ synergyc -f IPdelServidor:puerto

3. Common problems (which I personally encountered):

3.1. Same Hostname:

If any of the computers you want to connect to through Synergy It has the same name as another, the program will not know when using them which one it refers to. To solve the problem, we must rename it (hostname) to one of them. We achieve this in the following way:

In terminal:

  hostname nombre_comp

, then we edit the file:

  / etc / hostname

and the file:

  / Etc / hosts

, making sure that 127.0.0.1 references that same computer:

127.0.0.1 localhost

127.0.1.1 comp_name

3.2. Error "Unknown screen name «XXX» «

If the configuration was loaded successfully and you get this error, then it means that the server monitor is not in the configuration. All monitors have to be listed in the configuration.

3.3. Error "Cannot open primary screen«

To solve this, a simple solution is to first start the client, and then the server.

3.4. Other problems

For other errors that arise, the following problems link on the page of Synergy.

I hope you liked my short tutorial. It is worth mentioning that although I show a basic configuration, it has many other features to add, such as limiting in which part of the monitor the transition is made to the other machine, among others. If you want to expand, you can googling for more advanced settings.

That's it, and I hope the contribution will be one more grain of sand for everyone.

From already thank you very much..

Scalibur ..