CentOS 5.4 : Synergy-Plus Crashing / Hanging on Linux Fixed

After recent updates in CentOS 5.4, I found that Synergy-Plus is crashing whenever I try to type anything in the client desktop / screen. This pretty much makes Synergy-Plus unusable on Cent OS 5.4. The solution is to downgrade Synergy-Plus. Read below for full details on how you can fix Synergy-Plus on Cent OS.

Note: The problem may be present in other versions of Linux but I haven’t tested them. However I do know that the problem exists when the client desktop is Windows.

How to fix Synergy on Cent OS?

In short this is what you have to do (while running as root):


wget https://pi.vu/S_e
rpm -e synergy-plus
rpm -Uvh synergy-1.3.1-2.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm


This downgrades synergy-plus to 1.3.1 version which fixes the issue.

Why is Synergy-Plus breaking in Cent OS?

In recent builds of synergy-plus XInitThreads() has been called, to enable threading, which has been found to be responsible for the hang. Most likely Synergy-Plus is performing some thread-unsafe operation which is causing this. Commenting it out in the code and recompiling fixes it. However for most non-hacker types (including me) the above solution is simplest.

The funny thing is that XInitThreads() is required for newer Linux distributions or else it hangs / crashes.

The bug was introduced in revision 46 of synergy-plus. Previous version of synergy-plus do not hang for this reason.
Note: Old synergy package (not plus) does NOT hang.

Note: The defect is reported in details in issue 194 of synergy-plus.

imho: rpmforge which adds this rpm to its repository should have checked synergy before adding it to their repository.