[Tech] 1 keyboards, 2 hosts

A co-worker of mine turned me on to a product called 'Synergy' which is a software KVM type switch. It is very nice. I allows me to use one keyboard on mouse on multiple machines.

Here is my setup:

laptop (left client): Mac OSx 10.4.2

workstation (host): Solaris 10

My workstation (solaris 10 host) is the Synergy server (we will call it host1 to protect the innocent). My laptop is a synergy client (we will call it client1 to protect the innocent). I downloaded the source code for synergy and compiled it. On my laptop (client1) I let it install (./configure, make, sudo make install) into the default /usr/local/bin, on my workstation (host1) I compiled it and installed it into /opt/synergy/bin. Synergy on non-windows requires that you create a config file. Here is my synergy.conf file:

---start synergy.conf---
section: screens
host1:
client1:
meta = alt
end
section: links
host1:
left = client1
client1:
right = host1
end
section: aliases
client1:
client1.mydomain.edu
host1:
host1.mydomain.edu
end

I then started the server on host1:

/opt/synergy/bin/synergys -f -c /opt/synergy/bin/synergy.conf

(note synergy's default behavior is to background in daemon mode, the -f keeps it in the foreground, which is useful for testing). I didn't receive any errors, so I moved on to my laptop where I started the client:

/usr/local/bin/synergyc -f host1

I saw a successful connection message on the server and poof! I was linked! But this is not very secure, as things are passed unencrypted. But wait! Here is where my trusty friend SSH came in. I tunnelled the traffic over SSH between my two systems and it worked.

I used this link as a guide, but found that the example synergy.conf did not completely work for my mix of Solaris, OSX and synergy, so I did things a little differently (see my .conf above).

My procedure was this:

1. start synergy server on host1 at port 7777
/opt/synergy/bin/synergys -a host1.mydomain.edu:7777 -c /opt/synergy/bin/synergy.conf

2. establish a ssh tunnel from client1 to host1 with my user account
ssh -f -N -L1024:host1.mydomain.edu:7777 myname@host1

3. start synergy client on client1 and point to localhost:1024

4. enjoy

Helpful tips:
* make sure you enable port forwarding on the SSHD config
* use the same versions of synergy on all systems
* setup authorized ssh keys on each system to allow you to connect back and forth with minimal fuss, but this method works without them as well
* add the 'meta = alt' part under the OSX entry if you are using a SUN type keyboard and want to use the 'meta' (diamond shaped key) as the apple 'command' key.