Synergy drops

One thing I have noticed running Synergy with the server on Os X, and the client on Vista, is that if unplug the AC on the Vista side, and start to use on batteries, it starts to drop the connection, pretty, pretty often.
It doesn't matter how much battery left it has, the drops begins as soon as I unplug the AC.

I'm not sure, but I doubt that this is a Windows problem, I mean, the Compaq's WiFi NIC does work pretty well, with a very good signal strength all around, pretty much all the time.

Zip on Vista: sucks

Yeap, just like that, it takes for ever to unzip files, I don't know why, and this has been like this from day one, apparently, the Service Pack 1 should have taken care of this... But, I did install the Service Pack, and I haven't noticed any improvement whatsoever.

I mean, take a look at the screenshot... 4 minutes and a half to unzip an 800 KB file... That's like way too much...

Synergy, loving every keyboard combo

Being kinda busy lately... Lost of work
Kept playing a lot with Synergy lately, tweaking & trying to find the exact configuration to work confortable between Thor and Tango.

For the moment, I have left Orbis Tertius, my new Ubuntu Queen, out of the setup, haven't used it much these last few days. So. I have configured the Synergy server to be with just one client, and another few options, by far the most useful one is the screen switching via keyboard combo.

Here is the current configuration:

## -----------------------------------------------
## synergy.conf from thor.arenales.lan
## -----------------------------------------------

section: screens
        thor.arenales.lan:
        switchCorners = none
        switchCornerSize = 0

        tango:
        switchCorners = none
        switchCornerSize = 0

end

section: links
        thor.arenales.lan:
                left = tango

        tango:
                right  = thor.arenales.lan

end

section: options
        screenSaverSync                         = true
        switchDelay                             = 500
        keystroke(shift+control+left)           = switchToScreen(tango)
        keystroke(shift+control+right)          = switchToScreen(thor.arenales.lan)
end
# EoF #

Synergy go-around (2)

I found an interesting bit with Synergy, using this configuration I have for three boxes, you can actually circle the whole setup, ok.

But, they thing I found out last night, while I was unplugging, and turning off some of the boxes, that, once all the clients are off, if the server is still active, when the mouse hits the right side of the screen on the server's monitor, it would jump to the left, and vice versa.

Strange, one would think, or assume, that since all of the clients are off, it will give and error when you try to access them, but, it transparently ignores the unavailable clients.

Synergy go-around

Since the family is getting bigger, Synergy has to change its configuration too.

Here is a copy of Thor's actual Synergy (server) configuration file, the important bit (if I can call it that way :p ) is that since there are three screens now, I can do a full circle either way from one screen to the other, pretty handy to get there fast!

## -----------------------------------------------
## synergy.conf from thor.arenales.lan
## -----------------------------------------------

section: screens
        thor.arenales.lan:
        switchCorners = none
        switchCornerSize = 0

        tango:
        switchCorners = none
        switchCornerSize = 0

        orbis-tertius:
        switchCorners = none
        switchCornerSize = 0

end

section: links
        thor.arenales.lan:
                left = tango
                right = orbis-tertius

        tango:
                right  = thor.arenales.lan
                left   = orbis-tertius

        orbis-tertius:
                left  = thor.arenales.lan
                right = tango

end

section: options
        screenSaverSync = true
end
# EoF #

The family grows

The operation keeps growing and growing... Synergy certainly goes more than the extra mile to help keeping things as organized as possible.

Easy going ripping Sunday

Nothing much, a nice, cold (somehow & thinking locally) Sunday. tomorrow's a national holiday (moved to a Monday to increase tourism) so I have decided to rip a few of the CDs I left behind.

The taks was an ideal one for Tango and CDex.

Added to the collection:

- Kraftwerk - Autobahn
- Bob Dylan - Greatest Hits, Volume II (Disc 1 & 2)
- Depeche Mode - Ultra
- David Byrne - Rei Momo

Tango, now on Cinerama!

Hooked up my HUGE monitor to Tango, just for kicks... Strange I haven't thought of this before, but never mind.
Vista seems rather cool with this amount of screen real state.

MenuMeters (for Windows)

Found a nice program, a free one, called DriveGLEAM, that sort of adds the same functionality that MenuMeters has on Os X.

* Monitor physical disks or partitions (or both)
* Allows for CPU, RAM , VRAM usage display in tray.
* Read / Write / ReadWrite and Idle status indicators
* Indicators in tray or the parallel port, output directly to LED's, Just place some LED's on top of your monitor and enjoy real monitoring of read/write status realtime ;) (no special hardware required)
* Keyboard scroll lock LED option.
* Uses very few resources (including cpu usage)
* Very stable.
* Does not "hook" into your system
* Standalone, does not require a install but uses ini setup for your convenience.
* Failure in DriveGLEAM can't "freeze" your drives.
* Configurable start with os delay
* Configurable poll rate
* Does not install lots of files in your system.

It doesn't look as cool & spiffy as the Apple one, but it is as handy.

The current setup

What an amazing crappy pic! Thor sits on the floor, Tango sandwiched in the middle.

And, yes, I have to get that wall painted, but I can't handle the mess right now... Painting is a royal PITA.

Slimming the service

I have been using it for a while now.
No problems at all, so it is time to issue the Service Pack 1 after install cleaner.

Executed the command, and regained some 500 MBs worth of HDD -from 21,7 GB to 22,3 GB of HDD available-, rebooted Tango to see if there is an unpleasant surprise (after making a backup of my Outlook bundle file).

Before the screenshot

Another reddish screenshot form Tango, I'm starting to thing that the Compaq folks a re bit towards the commie side of things :p
VLC playing Before sunset, with Julie melting the LCD.

Tango screenshot

Another one, its been a while since I have posted a Tango screenshot.

Power shift

Changed my synergy setup, moved the server to Thor, my Quicksilver beauty, and the client now it is executed from Tango, the main benefit of the whole setup? I can tunnel the traffic between the two boxes thru SSH.

All you have to do is setup a PuTTY connection to the box running Os X (that box has to have the SSHD up & running, and the firewall has to be open to allow connections), you setup the PuTTY session, with the tunnel aiming to the port (24800 is the default), login via SSH to the Os X box, and then execute the client pointing to localhost on the client box.

Presto! That's it!

Here is a screenshot of the PuTTY configuration, the important part, the tunnel, on the client box, on my case, Tango.
The main drawback of all of this? Space, I have an extra keyboard, the one from Thor, on the desk, while the Tango's keyboard (the one built-in on the laptop) simply stays there without being used.

I'll use the setup for a few days and post back if there is a problem.

A red glowing tango screenshot

Another screenshot of Tango, my Vista beauty, it seems like the red fits here nice.

A Quad-Core beast

A screenshot of a new server at work, (actually, it is a screenshot of a couple of PuTTY terminal emulators connected to it, thru SSH :D ), I have never saw such a beast before... A 2 x Quad-Core Xeon, with 8 GB RAM.

Take a look at the stack of CPUs on the top & and on the htop window!!

Synergy buddies

It's been almost 2 weeks now, the 2 of them seems to be getting along pretty, pretty well.

The only problem I'm having is on the Windows side of the synergy, if Vista is a little busy with something, sometimes the jump to the Os x side seems to be a little bumpy; but it is something that does not last more than a couple of seconds; the usual suspect for the load on Vista is some Outlook delay while is stutters and receives a big email attachment.

Servicio Paquete Uno

Last night installed the SP1 on the little laptop that could.
No problem at all it took about an hour, hour and a half, a few reboots, and presto.

Since this is a work's laptop, I don't particularly give a sh•t about the content, other the emails, so, I just made a copy of my Outlook stuff, and thats it, installed the sucker.

No horror story here, everything seems to be working fine at the install, even the HDD space doesn't seem to have taken a big toll, Vista is stealing as much HDD as it usually does :D ...

One keyboard (& mouse) to rule them all

Installed Synergy, the server on Tango, and the whole thing -but executed only the client- on Thor.

Everything seems to be working nice and easy, I'm using Tango as the main one, because I like its keyboard, even tho it is in Spanish... And I can easily save more desktop space, because the keyboard is already attached to one of the two boxes :D

So far so good, no problem what so ever, will continue to use it, and post back if there is any problem; or post some screenshots from the Windows side of the configuration.

Lucifer's desktop?

Or "Back to basics screenshot". I got totally bored of the way the old & classic Windows looks like on Tango, it was literally a bit depressing.

So, got the Vista theme up & running once again, and also setup one of the built in wallpapers that came with the laptop; the combination of red with the mostly black of the Vista default theme seem to go along pretty well, as least, for my totally untrained eye.