Having just spent some time fiddling with Synergy on OS X, it seems that there aren’t any current instructions on how to make Synergy start automatically on OS X Leopard (and starting it manually is kind of a hassle). My approach is based on Jan Varwig’s instructions, which needed yet more modification for my purposes. Having configured synergy.conf (nota bene: Synergy treats hostnames as case-sensitive, so read the results of hostname carefully!), I set the server and client machines to automatically start their Synergy processes on login.
This requires creating a Launch Agent on each machine (the server and the clients) to start the processes. I use Lingon, mostly because it validates my XML and lets me use the GUI, sometimes (this, by the way, was a time when the GUI failed me — it tended to trim off parameters, be forewarned and use the Expert view).
On the server, I created a new My Agent thus:
Label net.sourceforge.synergy2.server OnDemand ProgramArguments /path/to/synergys --no-daemon --no-restart --debug WARNING /path/to/synergy.conf RunAtLoad |
And on the client, I created a similar My Agent thus:
Label net.sourceforge.synergy2.client OnDemand ProgramArguments /path/to/synergyc -f Server-Hostname RunAtLoad |
A reboot on each machine (server first) and all is ready to go (and, in fact, going).
Seth Battis October 25th, 2008
Posted In: Educational Technology, How To
Tags: install, KVM (Keyboard-Video-Mouse), launch agent, Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5), Lingon, Mac OS X, synergy