The uber geeks

Using synergy

Synergy is an application I’ve spoken about before. It allows you to use the same keyboard and mouse on 2, or many more, computers. It uses your ethernet (LAN) to send all of the mouse and keyboard data between the two systems, so no additional hardware is needed. Synergy is also not platform specific, so you can use the same keyboard and mouse on Windows, Macintosh and Unix.

Since I used it last, synergy has improved somewhat - but still takes a few moments to get up and running properly. I have a few suggestions to make it easier to use this very useful app.

Setup VNC first

If you only have 1 keyboard and mouse to use between the 2 computers you’d like to use synergy on, setup VNC first. Having VNC setup will allow you to control the other computer before you have synergy properly configured.

Config file example

The very first time I setup synergy, they had a much more complex configuration file structure. Since then they have simplified it some, but I figured I would give you a sample of a configuration file here. This is what my configuration file looks like.

section: screens
Dash.local:
greendestiny.local:
end

section: links
Dash.local:
right = greendestiny.local
greendestiny.local:
left = Dash.local
end

Dash and Green Destiny are the names (hostnames) of the two computers I am using synergy on. The “links” section of the configuration file tells synergy where the position of the screens are relative to one another. I’ve seen configuration files where this section gets quite complex, since the number of machines you use synergy on is unlimited. In other words, you can have 4 screens for 4 different computers and be able to link them all up to each other using this very simple configuration file.

The configuration file is by far the hardest (and I use this term loosely) part of this process. On Windows there is a GUI version of the client, so you will not even need to do much configuring at all.

Once you have followed the synergy instructions, and have the synergy server and client running on both machines - you can disconnect VNC and you’re all set.

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