Bill Tricarico Posted October 30, 2015 Share Posted October 30, 2015 I remember using the open source version of Synergy many moons ago, and it worked great. Today I went to the GitHub repo and pulled down the master zip. I tried to get that running on my MacBook Pro and Windows laptop and of course it's not trivial to make it work. Xcode is installed on the Mac and should just compile the build, according to the (very short) instructions. Well that didn't work out of the box. I tried the same thing on the Windows laptop (compile from source). Since I have Visual Studio 2015 installed this should be a no-brainer, right? No. hm complained that I didn't have a CMake file. There is no documentation on properly building Synergy from source for Mac or Windows. Clearly they want you to spend the $10 or $29 to buy the pre-built binaries. Ok I'll bite. I decided to purchase the $29 version to help support these guys and to get SSL (if I choose to use it). Installation was easy on Mac (El Capitan) and Windows (8.1). Windows is my Synergy server, and the Mac client will be to the left. I have external monitors for each machine, so I can keep the lids closed, neatly stacked on the desk, and hook up the mouse + keyboard to the Windows laptop. I was not aware I had to "activate" each installation. I just skipped it on the Windows box. Big mistake, as the SSL option is grayed out, but the Mac still thought SSL was active. This caused the famous SSL "unknown protocol" error I have seen in the forums. The wizard should not be labeled "Activate" where you enter the email/password. That is deceiving. I figured since I already "activated" the software on the Mac client, I was good to go. After properly authenticated to Synergy on both laptops, I was able to disable SSL on both, and get the Mac to properly connect (yay!). Now let's try it! I moved the mouse from the Windows laptop to the left to the Mac, and well, the mouse totally disappeared! I kept wiggling the mouse to find out where it was hiding. It was gone. I managed to recover it by CTRL+ALT+DEL and starting Task Manager, and killing Synergy. Also, I could move the native mouse on the Mac and turn off the Synergy client. Also, regarding Task Manager, synergy.exe shows up as a 32-bit app. I know I downloaded and installed the 64-bit Windows app. Why is it running in 32-bit mode? After getting frustrated, I shut down Synergy on both machines. Then, for some reason, my Windows desktop changed from landscape to portrait! What the hell? I had to open the laptop and unplug the external monitor to restore the screen orientation. But when I plugged the monitor back in, the orientation went back to portrait! Now I have to go into my display settings using the mouse in an awkward way, and force it back to landscape. This happened again, except now it decided to flip the desktop upside down! This has never happened before I installed Synergy, and the app wasn't even running. So needless to say, I am not able to use this app the way it was intended. I want to know if anybody else out there has experience similar issues. Thanks, Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vendforce Posted November 7, 2015 Share Posted November 7, 2015 crap software crap support crap updates another web scam you pay the money and then it doesnt work properly and you are not happy and want a refund , they just ignore you and wont refund your money shower of w**kers .. anything that says pay 29$ and you get access for life is a scam ( one off payment ) how can they keep developing it , if they dont get a subscription , how can they pay a developer ..... this is yet another dead service just laying around on the net for people to come across and think ill try this and then find it doesnt work and they end up spending more time trying to get it working than actually using it Welcome to the suckers club bill it cost you 29$ membership fee but on the up side its a one off payment , EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILVER LINING Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the-wes Posted November 8, 2015 Share Posted November 8, 2015 For anyone who finds this post in the future, here are the answers to each point raised: 1) Synergy is still open source 2) Activation is not required, using "skip activation" is an entirely valid method. You activated on one system and not the other. SSL encryption gets turned on by default after activating. It was turned OFF on the system where you skipped, and ON on the system where you didn't skip. Having encryption on on one system and off on another is what causes the error you got. You could have just unchecked it on the Mac and left the Windows system alone. I do realize at that time you hadn't found the option on the Mac yet, but to find it and then conclude that you had to activate on the Windows system in order to turn it off, is erroneous. 3) When the mouse disappears, and the Synergy server is a Windows system, it is almost always due to the Windows bug with screen scaling. It causes Windows to report the mouse position to Synergy inaccurately. There are workarounds for this, and Synergy is testing an automated fix you can find here: http://synergy-project.org/nightly?filt ... ha-19835b6 4) I have never heard of the screen orientation being changed by Synergy. It is extra unlikely when Synergy is not running. I'm guessing this was a coincidence. Many systems let you change the screen direction by using ctrl+alt+arrow keys. I don't know about the portrait/landscape stuff, that's just weird. 5) I haven't seen the 64-bit version of Synergy reported as being a 32-bit app before. Can you please post the filename of the file you downloaded? It may still be in your Downloads folder or file download history in your browser. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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