Saturday, October 09, 2010
Anu
Did you want to use two screens on two different computers as if they were connected to the same computer?
x2vnc will let you use two screens on two different computers asif they were connectedto the same computer. The computer with the 'main' keyboard must berunning X-window, and the second computer should have a VNC serverrunning which willupdate the contents on the actual screen. This means Xvnc is not suitable, but WinVNC is.
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- -display display
- The X windows display to connect from.
- -shared
- Allow multiple connections to the same VNC server.
- -north, -south, -east, -west,
- Determine which edge leads to the other screen.
- -passwdfile password-file
- With this option you can start x2vnc without entering a password. The file is created by vncpasswdx2vnc will ask for a password and create the file. which comes with the X-windows VNC software. Ifthe file does not exist,
- -resurface
- This option will cause the trigger window to re-surface automatically if it is covered up by another window.
- -hotkey key
- This option allows you to select which key to use to warp thepointer to and from second computer. The default is "Control-F12", anycombination ofmodifiers can be used, such as "shift-alt-meta-ctrl-F1" (ors-a-m-c-F1).
- -edgewidth pixels
- This is a workaround for some X servers which do not allow themouse to go all the way to the edge of the screen. By setting this to 2or greater, themouse will be able to reach the x2vnc window and thus warp to thewindows machine. The default value is 1. If you set this value to 0, noborder will begenerated, which means you will have to use hotkeys to switch to theoher screen.
- -desktop desktop-number
- With this option, you can make x2vnc non-sticky. This may notwork with all window-managers. Note that the first desktop is usually 0(zero). If you wantx2vnc to appear on the last (rightmost) desktop, use -1. This optionwas especially created with the sawfish edgeflipping in mind, normallyyou would use"-west -desktop 0" or "-east -destkop -1" with Sawfish to allowedgeflipping to work normally.
- -timeout seconds
- This options tells x2vnc how long to wait before warping thecursor back to the X screen if there is no activity. The reason forthis is that some screensavers, such as xscreensaver, cannot activate while x2vnc is in controlof the cursor. The default value is 590 seconds, which is equivalent to9 minutes and50 seconds. Using a value of 0 will disable timeouts completely.
- -nowheel
- This option does nothing and is left for backwards compatibility only.
- -wheelhack
- This will make x2vnc tranlate all mouse wheel events intoarrow up/down events. Only use this if your VNC server doesn'tunderstand mouse wheel events.
- -reversewheel
- Invert the up/down direction of the mouse wheel emulation. This option only works if -wheelhack is used.
- -scrolllines lines
- When using mouse wheel emulation, this selects how many up/down events will be sent for each tick of the mouse wheel.
- -navhack
- This will map button 6 & 7 to Alt+Left/Right, which willallow the navigation buttons on some mice to behave more like they doin windows.
- -mac
- Macintosh specific mode, maps second mouse button to control-mouseclick.
- -trimsel
- If the X selection looks like a URL, trim leading and trailing spaces. This can be useful for pasting URLs into a browser.
- -noblank
- Prevent screen blanking on the remote desktop while you areworking on the local desktop. Requires the MIT-SCREEN-SAVER or XIDLEextension to workproperly. If neither of these extensions are present, the remotedesktop will always be kept from blanking.
- -lockdelay seconds
- This is only meaningful when using the -noblank option. Whenthis option is present. With this option, x2vnc will not attempt towake up the remote screenif you have been idle for more than the specified amount of time. Thisis useful if you need a password to unlock the remote screen and wouldrather leave itblanked until you need it.
- -debug
- This option will make x2vnc print out information about events it sends and receives to stderr for debugging purposes.
- -accel multiplier
- This option allows you to control the speed of the mouse onthe remote screen. 2.0 means twice as fast, 0.5 means half as fast.Default is 1.0. Note thatthis is multiplied with a number which x2vnc calculates based on screensizes and other factors.
- -noreconnect
- This option prevents x2vnc from automatically reconnecting if the connection is closed.
- -tunnel
- This option makes x2vnc start an SSH tunnel to the machinebeing controlled by x2vnc. The SSH command used can be changed bysetting the X2VNC_SSH_CMDenvironment variable. The default is:
ssh -A -X -f -L "$LOCALPORT:$REMOTEHOST:$REMOTEPORT" \ "$GATEWAYHOST" 'ssh-add;sleep 60' - -via host
- This is similar to -tunnel, but tunnels through a host different than the machine being controlled by x2vnc.
Examples
Most common usage:x2vnc -passwdfile $HOME/.vncpasswd -resurface host:0To make x2vnc start (and re-start) automatically, add the following to your your X startup file (usually .xinitrc):
while :; do x2vnc -passwd $HOME/.vncpasswd -resurface host:0
sleep 2
done
