Synergy on Raspberry Pi

Created by Frank Zhao

Last updated on 2013-12-11 11:45:30 AM EST
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Guide Contents
Guide Contents
Intro: What is Synergy?
Setting up a Synergy Server
Compiling Synergy for Raspbian
Setup Synergy Client Autostart
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Intro: What is Synergy?
Synergy (http://adafru.it/d1c) is a free and open source software that allows multiple
computers to share a mouse and keyboard. One of the computers that the keyboard and
mouse is connected to becomes a Synergy server. The other computers becomes Synergy
clients. All of this is done over the network. So if your Raspberry Pi is connected to the network
somehow (via Ethernet or WiFi), you can setup your Raspberry Pi as a Synergy client so you can
remotely control your Raspberry Pi from another computer.
Other ways of remote controlling the Raspberry Pi are VNC (http://adafru.it/d1d) and
SSH (http://adafru.it/cag). VNC requires transmitting large amounts of data because it involves
transmitting screen images, thus it is slower than Synergy over a slow network. SSH is great for
command line work but not for a GUI environment. Synergy requires very little data but it does
mean that the Raspberry Pi needs to be connected to a computer monitor.
You can also use the Raspberry Pi as a Synergy server, but this is not recommended. One
reason is that Synergy isn't perfect, certain keys or special keys do not work. Some keyboards
and mice have special functions that require special drivers, which Synergy and Linux might
have trouble supporting.
Although a version of Synergy compiled for ARM (Raspberry Pi uses ARMv6) is available through
Raspbian's package manager, it is not the latest version of Synergy. Existing users of Synergy
may have updated their server installation. The protocol changes between different versions of
Synergy means that you must run the same version of the client and server. Thus, we must
recompile Synergy from the source code on the Raspberry Pi.

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Setting up a Synergy Server
You should first install Synergy on your main computer. Simply download it from Synergy's
website (http://adafru.it/d1e), select the one appropriate for your operating system. Install it as
normal. Check out Synergy's help page (http://adafru.it/d1f).
Before starting the server, configure the server to accept connections from a computer named
"pi". Configure the hot-corners or hot-keys as you desire.

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Compiling Synergy for Raspbian
Although you can get Synergy through the package manager, it is an older version that may be
incompatible with newer Synergy server versions. We are forced to compile Synergy ourselves
to ensure that it is using the latest protocol and runs on Raspberry Pi's ARMv6 processor.
Download the source code tarball from Synergy's download page, it must be the .tar.gz file.
Save it to /home/pi/downloads (make sure that folder exists first)
Download Download
Synergy 1.4.15 Synergy 1.4.15
Beta Source Code Beta Source Code
Tarball Tarball
http://adafru.it/d1g
Alternatively, use wget (http://adafru.it/d1h) through the terminal
Extract the tarball (http://adafru.it/d1i)
Raspbian does not come with some of the tools you might need, use the
APT (http://adafru.it/d1j) package manager to install the required tools. The following command
will take some time and eat up some disk space.
Navigate into the source code directory
Right now, what you should be doing is running cmake (http://adafru.it/d1k), which should
generate a makefile. But at this point, cmake will fail with an error regarding not being able to
find some header files. An error like "Missing header: X11/Xlib.hX11/XKBlib.h" might show up.
This is because Synergy's CMakeList.txt file is looking for header files inside /usr/local/include ,
but in Raspbian, it should be looking inside /usr/include. We'll fix that by editing CMakeList.txt.
cd /home/pi/downloads
sudo wget http://synergy.googlecode.com/files/synergy-1.4.15-Source.tar.gz
sudo tar -xzf synergy-1.4.15-Source.tar.gz
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y
sudo apt-get install gcc cmake libx11-dev libxtst-dev
cd synergy-1.4.15-Source
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Use the nano text editor (http://adafru.it/d1l) to look for the line
and change it to
and close nano, the hot-key for closing nano should be CTRL-X
It will ask you to save before closing, you must save it
Inside the directory synergy-1.4.15-Source/tools , there is a zip file called cryptopp562.zip
containing the Crypto++ library (http://adafru.it/d1m), which you must extract into the directory
synergy-1.4.15-Source/tools/cryptopp562 , if you don't do this, you will eventually run into an
error looking for the files inside. Do this from the terminal
There's a bit of strangeness inside the synergy-1.4.15-Source/tools/CMakeList.txt file, it wants
the C compiler to compile for the native architecture, but this will cause an error when the
compiler doesn't understand what the word native means. We need to change this to ARMv6
since we are on a Raspberry Pi. Open the file using nano
Look for the line
and edit it to
and close nano, the hot-key for closing nano should be CTRL-X
It will ask you to save before closing, you must save it
We have now done all of the steps to preemptively prevent the errors you will face.
sudo nano CMakeList.txt
set(CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH "${CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH}:/usr/local/include")
set(CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH "${CMAKE_INCLUDE_PATH}:/usr/include")
sudo unzip ./tools/cryptopp562.zip -d ./tools/cryptopp562
sudo nano ./tools/CMakeList.txt
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -march=native")
set(CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS "${CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS} -march=armv6zk")
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Now we can use cmake to configure our makefile build
This will take a while... grab a coffee. After it finishes, it should say:
What it did was check over your system to see if you have all of the required files, and see
what kind of tools are available. It uses this information to generate a makefile for you.
Now you can use make (http://adafru.it/d1n) to build the source code according to the makefile
This time, nuke some popcorn and watch a movie, this literally took a few hours. Nobody
claimed that the 700MHz Raspberry Pi was very fast.
When it finishes with no errors, a new directory at synergy-1.4.15-Source/bin should exist, and
inside should be several executables files. Install these by using the copy command to copy
the files into the /usr/bin directory

sudo cmake .
-- Configuring done
-- Generating done
-- Build files have been written to: /home/pi/download/synergy-1.4.15-Source
sudo make
sudo cp -a ./bin/. /usr/bin
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Setup Synergy Client Autostart
Now you've compiled and installed Synergy for the Raspberry Pi, you probably want it to start
right away whenever you start the LXDE (http://adafru.it/d1o).
You need to create an autostart file for LXDE, or add to it if it already exists, do the following
through the terminal
This will open the autostart file, add the following line to the bottom of the file
What this does is start the script named .startsynergy.sh whenever LXDE starts
We need to write the .startsynergy.sh script, again, open the file using nano
The script contents should be
Change the IP above to whatever your Synergy server's IP is!
Close nano, the hot-key for closing nano should be CTRL-X
It will ask you to save before closing, you must save it
Now we need to make sure the script has permission to execute, use the
chmod (http://adafru.it/d1p) command
sudo mkdir -p ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE
sudo touch ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/autostart
sudo nano ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/autostart
~/.startsynergy.sh
sudo nano ~/.startsynergy.sh
#!/bin/bash
killall synergyc
sleep 1
synergyc --name pi 192.168.0.16
exit 0
sudo chmod 777 ~/.startsynergy.sh
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and you are pretty much done, make sure the Synergy server is running, and reboot the
Raspberry Pi. When LXDE starts again, the Raspberry Pi becomes a Synergy client and connect
with the Synergy server automatically.

Adafruit Industries Last Updated: 2013-12-11 11:45:31 AM EST Page 9 of 9