Linux – Synergy dual-screen client

kvm-switchlinuxmultiple-monitorssynergy

I have synergy client 1.4 running on a Linux machine and same version server running on either Linux or Windows laptop (both have the problem described below).

My Linux client is Dual-Monitor setup. There is one video card (NVidia with proprietary driver) which has two monitors connected: one to DVI output another – to HDMI. Dual-Screen is configured via KDE Display configuration and HDMI output is set to be Left-of-DVI. Both monitors have 1920×1080 resolution.

The setup works flawlessly by itself. But when I try to use synergy to control the client, I can only enter one of the screens (The HDMI output) with the mouse cursor.

Relative position of the monitors are as follows:

+--------------+ +--------------+
|              | |              |
|  client 1    | |  client 2    |
|              | |              |
|              | |              |
+--------------+ +--------------+
            ↖
         +-------------+
         |             |
         |   server    |
         |             |
         +-------------+

The arrow indicates which monitor is accessible via synergy.

Is there anything that can be done?

Best Answer

Make sure that synergyc is starting after the monitor screens have been defined and positioned.

I have occasionally had only one screen or just part of a screen available to synergy while a local mouse could access all available screen area. Each time the problem has been that synergyc was starting up and remaining resident before the screens had their custom definitions appplied.

With KDM I use the procedure described here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynergyHowto. For the last few years (KUBUNTU 12.04 onwards), the startup files are in /etc/kde4/kdm) for KDM. Other display managers are also described in the SynergyHowTo.

To set the displays up before KDM login, put the screen orientation and position settings in Xsetup. To set the displays up after KDM login put them in Xsession.

I could not get synergy to see the entire desktop using the visual monitor setup, even with the 'save as default' button. I believe the problem is when in the startup sequence the settings are applied.

As an example my /etc/kde4/kdm/Xsetup contains this:

xrandr --output HDMI-0 --pos 0x0 --rotate left
xrandr --output DVI-I-1 --pos 1024x256 --primary

/sbin/initctl -q emit login-session-start DISPLAY_MANAGER=kdm

/usr/bin/killall synergyc
sleep 1
/usr/bin/synergyc --name CLIENTSCREENNAME SERVERHOSTNAME

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