Synergy mouse/keyboard sharing in reverse?

Question

I love synergy for two computers on a desk or similar situation. However, I have a desktop common pc that I use as a media center and was wondering if there was a way to accomplish the following situation.

Normally, the computer that runs synergy's server shared IT'S mouse and keyboard. So to control the media center from my laptop, I have to start the server on my laptop, and connect to it FROM the media center.

My question is, it is possible to do the reverse? Have synergy's server running on the media center pc, and connect different laptops/computers' to THAT? Any solution would be preferred. An ideal situation would be where a laptop user can connect to the media center computer, and the screen would always just be to the right.

Answer 1

Apparently you can configure the client to run as a service and automatically go looking for the server, that way you don't have to manually initiate a connection from the media center PC.

Answer 2

If its with a pair of windows based systems, mouse without borders might work well for your needs - dead simple, works with multiple computers on the same lan

Answer 3

To solve a similar problem of using different servers (computers with input devices) for my client (here media center) I configured the client to try to connect to localhost.

SSH provides the connection to the applicable server. Also the machine running the server doesn't have to publicly open a TCP-Port.

The synergys only listens to local connections here.

Run SSH from the server to the mediacenter (client) to open the connection:

ssh -N -R 24800:localhost:24800 [e-mail] '/usr/bin/synergyc -n mediacenter localhost'

Then start synergys on the server connecting the mouse, keyboard:

/usr/bin/synergys -n laptop -a localhost

See that synergy only listens to local connections, uses an encrypted transport and always connects to the server that opened the ssh-connection.

You can even run the client from autostart and open the ssh RemoteForward later if you like.