Introduction

The reason I wrote these notes is that I have some issues with the default readme provided with Synergy. First off, it instructs you to copy Synergy right into the /usr/bin directory. That's for the OS to manage, not for user based installs. Second, it instructs the user to enable root which brings up security concerns. Last the instructions use chmod 777 which leaves things even wider open.

Using the beta of Synergy it is a bit buggy and the keyboard is not mapping correctly. Instead, looking at commercial solutions,

http://www.keyboard-and-mouse-sharing.com/download.htm - looks promising

Setup of Command Client

Setup of /usr/local/bin

Traditionally in Unix, the /usr/local/bin directory is,

Reserved for binary applications that are manually installed and evoked from the command line
Available from any location because it is in the system path
Will not be touched by the core Operating System during upgrades

Though this is not common on Mac OS X, it is still Unix based. If you take a look at the default system path, even if the /usr/local/bin directory is not present, it is still in the path,

echo $PATH%
/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin% # Results will vary depending on what is installed on your system.

The /usr/local directory will already exists on you system. However, depending on what is installed the bin directory probably does not exist yet so we will create it,

cd /usr/local
sudo mkdir bin

Next, we copy the synergy software into the bin directory.

Manually Install Synergy

Download Synergy but do not unzip it. We are going to remove the extra download dialog box attributes,

ls -al # Notice the @ symbols in the permissions column.
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine synergy-1.4.4-MacOSX106-Universal.zip
ls -al # Now the @ symbol is gone.

Unzip the file.

Next, change to the unzipped folder and manually install Synergy,

cd ~/Downloads/synergy-1.4.4-MacOSX106-Universal # Sample location
sudo chown root:wheel *
sudo chmod g+xr synergyc synergys
sudo chmod o+xr synergyc synergys
sudo chmod g+rw synergy.conf.example
sudo chmod o+rw synergy.conf.example
sudo cp -R synergy* /usr/local/bin/

Setup of GUI to Run Services

Unless you want to setup Synergy on the mac with a text editor (which is error prone and can be quite confusing), download QSynergy.

Install QSynergy as you would any other Apple application.

Read Dušan Vučković article on setting up QSynergy with the minor addition of pointing to your installation of Synegy.

References

Purpose of /usr/bin/local - http://superuser.com/questions/192281/purpose-of-usr-local-bin-on-linux-system

Mac OS X GUI Setup Guide - http://www.dusanvuckovic.com/tutorials-2/interoperability/multiple-computers-with-one-keyboard-and-mouse-synergy/h

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