Synergy 2.0.10 not working on Ubuntu 18.04

[Greg Boban]

It's not working reliably for me. Usually when I reinstall it works temporarily, but gets stuck loading as soon as the screen locks. When I log back in, it's stuck in loading. Shutting down, restarting, restarting synergy, or re-selecting what computer to share from doesn't help.

I've submitted my logs. If anyone knows a solution please let me know in the next 10 days, before I persue a refund.

[jel3]

having same issue on fresh install of Ubuntu 18.04 

[jel3]

My issue was because I had installed curl which in turn installed libcurl4, seems like synergy does not like libcurl4. I uninstalled libcurl4 and installed libcurl3 and synergy installed fine and is up and running.

[stevebro]

I use cryfs which relies upon libcurl4.  However, I edited the .deb file to remove the dependency and the app now installs.

I have it installed on two different Ubuntu 18.04 machines.

The problem is that one of the machines seems to connect at a time.  The other one "spins."  Then, when the spinning one turns green, the first one starts spinning.

[Greg Boban]

Thanks for sharing your experience. I don't have curl, libcurl3, or libcurl4 installed. 

[SzeLu]

having same issue on fresh install of Ubuntu 18.04 . And I want to know how to persue a refund.

[SzeLu]

I found the way to persue a refund. Sending a email to refunds@symless.com

[GranPaSmurf]

Just another data point.

I recently updated to Ubuntu 18.04. In my case, I copied a few essential files to Dropbox, then since I had very little actually stored on that drive, I did a full new install of Ubuntu 18.04. Wipe the drive, repartition; the whole bit.

My Ubuntu 18.04 is really clean with only Chromium, Krita and Slack installed. Well, and Synergy.

It is running Synergy 2.0.10 and is rock solid. Never a stutter, a lost clickability or dropped the connection. I've had none of the usually reported issues. It has a Logitech gaming keyboard (no supporting software) and is my main machine, the Synergy server.

I'm not recommending this drastic move, only adding my experience to the thread.

[Greg Boban]

I'm running a clean install of Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. The only PPAs I've added are for Dropbox, Variety, VirtualBox, Vivaldi, Papirus, and Gimp. Everything else if fresh out the box.

[Davewill]

I had similar problems with a system that had been upgraded to 16.04 from 15.10. My problem was incompatibilities with Qt. I was never able to resolve it, and ultimately the only solution was a fresh install of Ubuntu.

[Jedidiah Bartlett]

I'm getting the  "There was a problem connecting to the background service" error on 18.10 (fresh install, Synergy is the first thing I'm installing after setting up the proxy and nfs shares / kuberos etc.. for authentication to my corporate network and mounting network drives)
 

synergy-service[878]: terminate called after throwing an instance of 'boost::exception_detail::clone_impl<boost::exception_detail::error_info_injector<boost::system::system_error> >'
 May 04 09:55:47 jed-DELL synergy-service[878]:   what():  Invalid argument

[Jedidiah Bartlett]

16 hours ago, jel3 said:

My issue was because I had installed curl which in turn installed libcurl4, seems like synergy does not like libcurl4. I uninstalled libcurl4 and installed libcurl3 and synergy installed fine and is up and running.

I have libcurl3 installed at the moment.

[Jedidiah Bartlett]

Just now, Jedidiah Bartlett said:

I'm getting the  "There was a problem connecting to the background service" error on 18.10 (fresh install, Synergy is the first thing I'm installing after setting up the proxy and nfs shares / kuberos etc.. for authentication to my corporate network and mounting network drives)
 

synergy-service[878]: terminate called after throwing an instance of 'boost::exception_detail::clone_impl<boost::exception_detail::error_info_injector<boost::system::system_error> >'
 May 04 09:55:47 jed-DELL synergy-service[878]:   what():  Invalid argument

I tried un-installing (sudo apt remove synergy), deleting config directories (as recommended in the other thread), and then re-installed with a fresh download (  sudo dpkg -i synergy_2.0.10.stable~b20+ecfd5e95_amd64.deb)  Started synergy, it registered me again, and I'm back to the same error.   And yes, I did already submit a ticket, but was hoping there might be a quick short-term fix the community might have.

 

[Greg Boban]

Nick's instructions on uninstalling and reinstalling seem to have done the trick for me. There must have been some files left over from Synergy 1 that were interfering with Synergy 2 Pro.

[Prez Cannady]

Still testing this solution (still using 1.9.1), but here's what I did to reconcile Synergy with libcurl4 on Ubuntu 18.04:

1. Downloaded the appropriate Synergy package.
2. Unarchived the package, then unarchived the resulting control.tar.gz, all so I can edit the control file:

   $ ar x synergy_1.9.1.stable_b327+2a0225c1_amd64.deb
   $ tar zxvf control.tar.gz
   $ vim control

    

3. Modify the control file, removing libcurl3 with libcurl4 (>= 7.58.0)

   Package: synergy
   Version: 1.9.1.stable~b327+2a0225c1
   Architecture: amd64
   Maintainer: Symless <engineering@symless.com>
   Installed-Size: 2591
   Depends: libavahi-compat-libdnssd1 (>= 0.6.16), libc6 (>= 2.14), libcurl4 (>= 7.58.0), libgcc1 (>= 1:3.0), libqt5core5a
   Section: utils
   Priority: optional
   Homepage: https://symless.com/synergy
   Description: Keyboard and mouse sharing solution
    Synergy allows you to share one mouse and keyboard between multiple computers.
    Work seamlessly across Windows, macOS and Linux.

    

4. Rolled everything back up into a new package. Note, the order of contents are specified when archiving the new deb matters.

   $ tar c md5sums control | gzip -c > control.tar.gz
   $ ar rcs synergy_1.9.1.modified.deb debian-binary control.tar.gz data.tar.xz 
   $ sudo apt install ./synergy_1.9.1.modified.deb

    

[Prez Cannady]

I should note the above solution works only for the server (client will crash as it apparently really, really wants libcurl3). 

[ascurion]

I can confirm that Synergy2 does not work properly when libcurl4 is installed. I removed libcurl4 and installed libcurl3 and it works fine. I currently have the inconvenient situation where Synergy is un-installled by apt when for example installing "r-base" as this will install libcurl4 and removes libcurl3 and all dependent programs with it. If one does not pay attention to the apt report before installing a package Synergy2 just disapears.

[Guest Andrew Nelless]

Our Synergy 2.0 packages are built against libcurl4 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, however cURL is now actually an unused legacy dependency that has been removed in v2.0.11, so this release (due out today or tomorrow) should resolve this issue

 

[Prez Cannady]

Will this necessitate an upgrade to 2.0? 1.9.1 is also impacted by dependency on libcurl3.

[ascurion]

Just to confirm with Synergy 2.0.11, this issue is resolved for me on 18.04. 

[Marcio Tavares]

15 hours ago, Prez Cannady said:

Will this necessitate an upgrade to 2.0? 1.9.1 is also impacted by dependency on libcurl3.

I've had the same problem with v1.9, did the same as you did (with only one difference, below). The front-end crashes, but the background service continues to work.

Try to create a symbolic link to "simulate" libcurl3:

cd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/
ln -s libcurl.so.4.5.0 libcurl.so.3

Context of libcurl3 vs libcurl4: https://askubuntu.com/a/861939

[Jedidiah Bartlett]

Just now, Marcio Tavares said:

I've had the same problem with v1.9, did the same as you did (with only one difference, below). The front-end crashes, but the background service continues to work.

Try to create a symbolic link to "simulate" libcurl3:

cd /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/
ln -s libcurl.so.4.5.0 libcurl.so.3

Context of libcurl3 vs libcurl4: https://askubuntu.com/a/861939

Yes, you will have to modify the v1.9 package as well.

I was unable to get Synergy2 working (2018-05-07). See the following
blog posts:
- https://symless.com/forums/topic/5654-synergy-2010-not-working-on-ubuntu-1804/
- https://symless.com/forums/topic/5634-reverting-to-synergy-1xx/

So, these are the instructions for Synergy 1.9 on Bionic Beaver (with libcurl4)

 - Install fakeroot to maintain permissions while modifying the deb `sudo apt install fakeroot`
    - Instructions and explanation of using dpkg with fakeroot are on stack exchange:
          https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/138188/easily-unpack-deb-edit-postinst-and-repack-deb)
 - Login to Synergy and download version 1: https://symless.com/synergy/downloads
 - In the downloads dir, extract the package and modify it:  (Replace gedit with kate or vim .. whatever)

fakeroot sh -c ' \
mkdir tmp; \
dpkg-deb -R synergy_1.*.stable~*.deb tmp; \
gedit tmp/DEBIAN/control; '

- Edit the control file to replace the libcurl3 version with `libcurl4 (>= 7.58.0)`
- Save the control file and exit the editor
- Turn it back into a deb and remove the tmp dir

fakeroot sh -c 'dpkg-deb -b tmp/ synergy_1~fixed.deb; rm -rf tmp'

- Install the package, and have apt install the dependencies:

sudo dpkg -i synergy_1~fixed.deb
sudo apt install -f

 

 

[rookhsd1]

Hello All,

 

After an upgrade from ubuntu 16.04 to ubuntu 18.04 I was unable to install synergy 1.9.1  until I removed libcurl4. After that Install worked fine and all is good. 

 

[Ethor]

On 5/9/2018 at 5:01 PM, Jedidiah Bartlett said:

Yes, you will have to modify the v1.9 package as well.

 

 

Thank you so much.

Synergy 2 is far from being ready for production and I had this dependency problem since I started using ubuntu 18.04.  Guess I'll be able to stay on the 1.x branch until 2.x gets all the missing features.

[tduvally]

I can't install 1.9.1 at all on 18.04 (not an upgrade). It requires libcurl3, but libcurl4 is the default libcurl on install. And I can't switch without breaking about a dozen packages.

I've submitted a support request, but this has been a problem since 18.04 was released and I'm not sure there has been any update to 1.x since before then.