Shared display and keyboard on SGIs:
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I have several SGI workstations at the moment. Actually 3 of them are available
for an immediate use and I have 3 monitors on my desk so they can be used at
once. They are:
* Indigo connected to a left monitor (1280x1024 Dell LCD) O2 connected to the
* center monitor (1600x1024 SGI 1600SW LCD) Indy connected to the right monitor
* (1280x1024 ViewSonic VP171 LCD)
It sounds as a good idea to use one keyboard and one mouse for all three
machines. I have a KVM switch for them but it has numerous disadvantages:
* only keyboard + mouse can be used (the screens are not compatible and I want
* to see all three at once) the Indigo don't have PS/2 (it's keyboard and mouse
* have proprietary connectors) thus the switch can only handle the Indy and the
* O2 it is a bit uncomfortable to use a switch during work
Thus the software solution should be better. And even more better if it will
also support a clipboard shared between machines.
I am aware about these three options which have these features:
1. Synergy:
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It's quite nice (but hard to use if one of machines is overloaded). It's main
problem is it's unavailability for the Indigo (the same version has to be
used on all machines). I used to use it for some time to connect a Linux
machine with the SGI but I stopped to used is as it was impossible to
synchronize the versions between machines (the SGI port is freezed in the
past).
2. X2X:
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That's what I use now. It's not bad, it usually works as expected and it even
don't require to be installed on all machines. It also does not like big CPU
loads (all connected machines became uncontrollable). I will probably keep to
use it. The problem is that it is not available before login into the desktop
(it's not available for SGI's XDM clone).
3. NDS:
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This is a SGI's proprietary solution. It should be the most reliable and
according to the man page it could be even available during login. I have to
test it as soon as possible.
Of course using of 3 SGI computers at one moment makes sense only in special
cases. But I'm sure that there are situations in my workflow when such setup
can be useful.
