I finally got around to setting up Synergy, sharing the keyboard and mouse between Leopard and Vista. I ran into problems trying to use Leopard as a synergy client, just wouldn’t work. So I took the path of less resistance and ran the Synergy server on Leopard and the client on Vista. That works fine with one caveat, I can’t seem to run the synergy server on Leopard as a daemon, it just dies. Now I just leave it up and running in the foreground in one of the many terminal windows I have open.
Aside from the oddities of getting it to work with Leopard I’ve been really impressed with Synergy. It is amazingly smooth when going from one system to another. I highly recommend it if you need a simple keyboard and mouse sharing solution.
UPDATE 22 Feb 2008: See Comment 14 by jimeh about SynergyKM. On Leopard I’ve switched to SynergyKM, which I’ve been really happy with so far.
November 6th, 2007 at 10:34 am Lonnie Olson
The best workaround for this bug is to run synergy from launchd (Apple’s new daemon starter and more).
See an example launchd.plist file here.
http://jan.varwig.org/archiv/autostarting-the-synergy-server-on-mac-os-x-using-launchd
November 6th, 2007 at 11:31 am Joseph Scott
@Lonnie-
Thanks for the pointer. Unfortunately that describes how to do it for Tiger (10.4) and I’m running the synergy server on Leopard (10.5).
November 7th, 2007 at 8:03 pm Stephen
Something funny is going on, it works fine if the client isn’t using -f (no fork to background)
November 7th, 2007 at 10:29 pm Joseph Scott
@Stephen
It isn’t great, but it works with running the synergy server in the foreground on Leopard.
November 24th, 2007 at 3:15 am Steve’s Movie/Tech Log » Blog Archive » Synergy Client Mac OS X Leopard
[...] there is a bug in Synergy 1.3.1 with OS X 10.5. When you try to start Synergy (client or server)Â as a daemon [...]
November 30th, 2007 at 12:01 am Alex
Ya, I have tried a lot of different ways, with xp and leopard and so far no luck at all which kinda makes me mad. I really want it to work
December 1st, 2007 at 5:55 pm Dan
So this IS confirmation that there is a problem with Synergy on Leopard thats preventing it from working properly between Leopard and Vista/XP?
I don’t know much, but I have synergy on this Vista laptop I’m setting up and then I have synergy on my mac which is from when I had Tiger and upgraded to Leopard.
I’m on the same network, the computer names are fine, but I can’t figure out why in the world this isn’t working. Vista doesn’t see the mac in the network, neither synergy client or host works for either of the computers when trying to connect with each other and I just don’t understand what’s wrong.
December 5th, 2007 at 4:08 pm Parad0X
If you look in the /var/log/system.log you can see that synergy is crashing. Well no wonder, last version (1.3.1-1) is dated April, 2006. So foreground mode it is :(
December 5th, 2007 at 5:24 pm Joseph Scott
@Parad0X -
Yeah, bummer, but workable in the foreground.
December 6th, 2007 at 8:41 am Lin
Thanks to whoever pointed out that the synergy client still works in the foreground.
synergyc -f 10.10.10.38 >/dev/null 2>&1 &
This works quite nicely in Leopard. I actually use a couple of shell scripts to call synergyc based on my present location… I run one script at work, another at home… etc.
I added the -f and the end part to silence and bacakground the process and presto.
December 19th, 2007 at 7:17 am c0nv1ct
that works too, i just set the debug level to FATAL, which doesnt output anything hardly ever, unless my server goes down, which it doesnt
syngergyc -d FATAL -n whatever -f ipaddress &
January 3rd, 2008 at 12:21 am Cody Robbins
In case this helps anyone, the two blog posts linked above
http://jan.varwig.org/archiv/autostarting-the-synergy-server-on-mac-os-x-using-launchd
http://stevehorbachuk.com/?p=19
worked perfectly in getting Synergy working again for me in Leopard.
January 22nd, 2008 at 7:20 pm sgricci
I’m surprised to be saying this…
But start synergy using the -f trigger, then just QUIT terminal, then go about your normal business. Synergy will stay running and you’re all set.
I’m running a Macbook (black) with 10.5.1 leopard, using this method with no problem.
-sg
January 24th, 2008 at 4:40 pm jimeh
I never bothered attempting to mess with getting the normal official release to work, cause there’s the SynergyKM project:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/synergykm
it hasn’t been updated for a while, but it still works great on leopard, as it did on tiger… i’m currently using it between my powerbook and macbook pro, both running 10.5.1… it also adds a login item for synergy so it’ll launch on login in client or server mode, whatever you’ve configured it for…
also, synergyKM has a location feature like network preferences, seemed a little bit buggy tho the one time i used it… lol
its just such a headache less solution, even if it hasn’t been updated for a long while, and the core binaries are 1.3.0, it still works fine with 1.3.1 for windows for example… i should note i did replace the binaries inside the prefpane to the 1.3.1 for osx at some point, but things got a lot more unstable, so i just reverted… lol
January 30th, 2008 at 7:04 am Joseph Scott
@jimeh -
Nice, I hadn’t come across SyneryKM before. I’ll have to give that a try.
February 15th, 2008 at 9:08 am itzenmaster
SynergyKM works like it should in 10.5 and 10.5.2
February 20th, 2008 at 1:37 pm Roger Pack
Thank you! running synergyc with -f as you suggested makes is so I can use it as a client in leopard. Rock on.
April 16th, 2008 at 1:24 pm Karen Nakamura
I’ve been using Teleport which seems rock solid on 10.5.
June 18th, 2008 at 3:34 am Mac Mouse
Hi, done a awesome work. Synergy has only been extensively tested on Linux which make the my work more easier. Thank you for the blog posted. The Mac OS X port is incomplete. It does not synchronize the screen saver. Therefore in this case Synergy as helped me a lot with its special features.
SynergyKM was previously hosted on a personal server and I decided to move it here in coming week. Hopefully it will give the project more visibility and provide better tools to maintain it.
Thank U.