Sharing your keyboard and mouse
May 16, 2008
Because I have to administer a few Apple XServers, I need to keep a Mac around. Their server administration tools are (to my knowledge) closed source, and the command line tools are atrocious. We also have an XRAID, which I don’t believe HAS any command line tools which with to administer it. So I need a Mac.
To this end, I have a 17″ antique Powerbook that I keep around. It’s big and clunky, and with only a gig of memory running Tiger, it’s none too fast. I keep it around because I have to use the Admin Tools, and that’s about it. It takes up a lot of room on my desk, and having to turn constantly gets irritating, so a while back, I found a Better Way(tm).
Enter Synergy. It’s a client/server program that allows one computer’s keyboard and mouse to act as others’ inputs. Sort of like a software based KVM, without the V.
On my desktop, I type synergys, which starts the Synergy server. On the client machine, I type “synergyc newcastle”. You must specify the server, since synergy can connect to multiple machines at once, which would be fantastic for a NOC team with shared computers.
The configuration is pretty simple. In Windows, there’s a GUI, but in Unix, it’s a simple config file.
Here’s the content of mine:
bandman@newcastle[501]:~$ cat /etc/synergy.conf section: screensnewcastle:guiness.local:harp:endsection: linksnewcastle: left = guiness.local right = harpguiness.local: right = newcastle left = harpharp: right = guiness.local left = newcastleend section: aliasesharp: harp.int.iaend
It’s pretty straight-forward. In my example above, I have three machines. Newcastle is my linux machine, and the keyboard / mouse host. To the (physical) right of it is guinness, the mac. To the left of newcastle is (sometimes) another laptop called harp.
When I move my mouse off the right side of guinness, I want it to wrap to the left side of harp (or newcastle, if harp is gone), I specify that harp is to the right of guinness. Vice versa on the left.
Anyway, if you find yourself with too many computers and not enough inputs, give Synergy a shot. It’s a great piece of software that I’ve given a couple of my users, and they love it.
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May 16th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
I also passed that on to a couple of my co-workers after you told me about it, and they love it too – Although when something happens to make it not work, it’s the most frustrating thing to fix without a keyboard/mouse on both computers.
May 27th, 2008 at 10:43 am
I use Synergy for three computers, a Linux, Windows and a Mac OS X. I keep keyboards and mice connected to everything, but they are tucked out of my way unless I need them.