The McKenzie’s Blog…

Ok, let me explain first what it is.. Synerygy2 is a way to share multiple computers with one keyboard and mouse.  No, it’s not a KVM replacement.. Synergy2 replaces only the keyboard and mouse, you’ll need to have a monitor attached to each machine on your desk.  This is actually a plus.  In the photo below you’ll see my working area at the office… I’ve labelled which each runs for an OS and below that the names of the computers (click to see the full size image)

The keyboard and mouse is actually attached to the Ubuntu machine, in other words that’s the “server”.  The XP and Windows 7 machines are “clients”.  One thing to consider with Synergy is that it’s not secure.  It does send everything you type in plain text over the network.  This can be avoided by tunnelling the connection over something like SSH.  Perhaps I’ll cover that later.  Synergy2 isn’t new, it’s been around a very long time.

I don’t want to reinvent the wheel or try to take any limelight from those that have already posted great articles on how to set it up, the best information can be found from the Synergy2 website itself.

What I’m posting about is really how to fix a problem that I’m sure others might have encountered.  Right.. so the problem is this.  As I’ve said, the server is on Ubuntu.  Naturally the “Windows key” on Ubuntu has no natural meaning to the OS, it’s just another key and not mapped to anything out of the box.  The problem I’ve had is that while using Synergy the “Windows Key” didn’t work on the Ubuntu machine even though I’d remapped it to do things, such as Win + T to open a new xterm, Win + R to open the Run Command Dialog (basically making it operate a bit like Windows).   the fix for this was a change in the $HOME/.synergy.ini file on the Ubuntu machine.  The weird thing was that when move the mouse to the XP machine the Windows key did what it should, however on the Windows 7 it wouldn’t work.

Right, so what was the fix?  Here is my .synergy.ini file

section: screens
burma:
scotland:
  meta = super
rambler:
  meta = super
end

section: links
burma:
left = scotland
right = rambler
scotland:
right = burma
left = rambler
rambler:
left = burma
right = scotland
end

section: options
screenSaverSync = true
end

The important lines above are the “meta = super”.  Under Ubuntu the Windows Key is called “meta”.  This tells Synergy when the focus is on the windows machines to map the “meta” key to the “super” key, or in other words the Windows key.  Once that was changed and synergys was restarted all was good again.

I’m posting this for anyone else that might have a problem with the windows key not working under synergy with Linux/Ubuntu/Unix machines and windows machines, but also as a reminder to myself should I forget how I fixed it   I’d been through this exercise about 4 years ago but having rebuilt that machine I couldn’t for the life of me recall how I fixed it .. well, now that I’ve blogged about it I’ll at least have one good place to go and find the answer again  

Wow, I’ve just looked at my blog and haven’t posted anything since Nov 2009?! ? WTF is that all about anyhow?  Lets see, what’s happened since my last posting?  Well, I’ve returned from South Africa   It was a great trip, ran longer then originally planned but it was good.

We’ve all suffered through Christmas and of course New Years, so Happy New Year eh?

Well, that brings us to today now.  I’ve converted back to Windows (it was a sad day yesterday).  I’d finally had enough of Ubuntu.  It was a series of issues that forced me back to Windows … apps that stopped working, funny things happening since upgrading from Ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10, that was a mistake for sure and generally speaking I just grew tired of missing functionality in Ubuntu when everyone you deal with uses Windows.  Oh well.  I’m not running Windows 7, 64-Bit, finally making full use of the hardware in my laptop.  The only “issue” I have right now is Win 7 doesn’t seem to support the ACPI power management stuff.. so, as a result when I pull the power and run on battery the only performance tuning that happens is the screen dims but the CPU’s run full out and thus drain the battery at an alarming rate.  I’m sure I’ll find the correct drivers for that issue at some point. 

Oh yeah, I bought a new car as well .. pics of the new motor here ..

There’s not really much else to report I suppose.  As usual, check out the photos on our flickr account for new photos and videos. Such as this one, Lisa playing her piano..

I hope I’ll have some more interesting things to blog about in the future.. just sort of lost the desire to blog.. hoping it comes back.