DELTA NOVA

This weekend I have been setting up synergy to work between my XP desktop and one of my Gentoo Linux boxes. Both are running version 1.3.1 of synergy with XP being the server. I ran into a couple of issues; now solved, that are common enough that others may find my posting of a solution useful.

Problem 1: The ‘@’ symbol would appear as the omega symbol (on the linux box) even with the correct language and keyboard layout settings. This is a known bug for the project and is already listed in its bug tracker. The worksround is as follows:

At a terminal prompt type:

echo keycode 24 = q Q at at at at | xmodmap -

If successful this should now allow the ‘@’ to appear correctly.

Problem 2: When moving the mouse over to the linux box the cursor would vanish. Initially I thought this to be a synergy problem, its listed in the bug tracker. However this time it is nVidia’s fault. I have a motherboard with an integrated graphics chipset (NVIDIA GeForce 6150B + nForce 430), there appears to be a problem with the nvidia drivers for linux for my chipset. The problem releates to the hardware cursor, i.e. when the card itself draws the cursor on the screen. To solve this the hardware cursor must be disabled and the software cursor allowed to take its place. Once this is has been done the problem is solved.

To disable the hardware cursor add the following line to your xorg.conf with the rest of your input device settings.

Option “HWCursor” “Off”

I hope these notes come in handy for anybody with similar issues.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 1st, 2006 at 12:26:06 and is filed under Computer, Software. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.