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x2vnc 1.7.2

A dual-screen hack

Written by Fredrik Hubinette
Based on ideas from x2x and code from VNC.


What it does

This program will let you use two screens on two different computers as if they were connected to the same computer. Even if one of the computers runs Windows 95/98/NT and the other one runs X-windows. If they are both running Windows, you probably want to use Win2VNC instead.

Personally, I have two computers, both with linux installed, but I often have to run Windows 95 or Windows NT when working, and I just got tired of switching between the two keyboards. Therefore I wrote this program. While running this program I can move the mouse pointer beyond the right edge of my X display, and then the pointer will appear on the screen on the other computer. If you have ever used x2x or a computer with two graphics cards, you know what I am talking about.

How it works

The program will open a small (one pixel wide) window on the edge of your screen. Moving the pointer into this window will trigger the program to take over your mouse and send mouse movements and keystrokes though the RFB protocol to a VNC server running on another machine. When the pointer is moved back towards the opposite edge on the other screen, the mouse is then released again.

The operation itself is almost identical to x2x, but most of the code was actually borrowed from the program vncviewer.

As the name x2vnc implies, x2vnc can only send events from an X-windows based display to any VNC server. VNC servers can run on Microsoft Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP. x2vnc will not run without X-windows. Please note that the normal VNC server for X windows does not control the mouse on the screen itself, but creates a virtual server in memory instead. If you wish to control an X11 display with x2vnc, you need to use x11vnc, but it's probably easier to just use x2x instead.

Download

ChangeLog

Changes since version 1.7.1
  • Fixed some bugs
Changes since version 1.6.1
  • Now re-connects automatically
  • New input capture method which handles odd screen sizes better
  • Added -tunnel and -via for automatic SSH tunneling
  • Further fixes for cut'n'paste. (Should now work with java and on 64 bit platforms.)
  • Randr support allow x2vnc to detect when the screen is rotated
Changes since version 1.6
  • Added Martin Dorey's patch which fixes cut'n'paste for Java (and other) applications.
  • Fixed a bug in -navhack
Changes since version 1.5.1
  • Added some patches from Grant McDorman to allow proper cut'n'paste between x2vnc and Konsole/gnome-terminal.
  • Honor $DESTDIR to make packaging easier.
  • Added a workaround to make cut'n'paste work better with old VNC servers.
  • Since all new VNC servers already support wheel emulation themseleves, x2vnc doesn't translate wheel events to arrow up/down anymore unless -wheelhack is specified.
  • Added -navhack which is similar to -wheelhack, except it translates button 6 & 7 to Alt+Left/Right.
  • Added -debug to debug key events
  • Allow -edgewidth 0 to turn off edge-flipping
Changes since version 1.4
  • Now traps grabkey errors, no more X errors.
  • Xinerama support, allows x2vnc to work sanely on multi-head X displays.
  • If stdin is not a tty, read password with fgets() instead of getpass(). This allows scripts to feed in the password.
  • New arguments -noblank and -lockdelay allows you to keep screen savers from activating while using your computers.

Changes since version 1.31

  • Added hotkey functionality.
  • Added Macintosh mode.
  • Included a patch for -trimsel.
  • Implemented -scrollines
  • Fixed a glitch which made the pointer appear briefly at the wrong side of the screen.
  • Implemented a grab timeout to allow xscreensaver to activate gracefully.
  • Added -desktop option.
  • AltGr should now work properly.
  • move remote cursor to resting place immediately when connecting to confuse the user less. (Thanks to Patrick Cheng)
  • Included tkx2vnc, a x2vnc frontend written by David Noble (In contrib directory)

Changes since version 1.3

  • Fixed an off-by-one error that made it impossible to get to the last pixel on the screen with the mouse pointer. This of course made it hard to access the Task Bar on the Windows computer.

Changes since version 1.2

  • Cut'n'paste should now work properly
  • Reversed the mouse wheel direction. (Use -reversewheel for old behaviour)
  • Added a autoconf 'configure' script to make it easier to compile
  • Fixed some -edgewidth problems

Changes since version 1.1

  • SHIFT-TAB should now work on HP-UX
  • Applied the mouse-wheel patch, can be disabled with -nowheel (and fixed a bug in the mouse-wheel patch)
  • Added a man page
  • Made -passwd create the password file if it does not exist
  • Added makefile rules for making rpms
Changes since version 1.0

  • SHIFT-TAB should now work
  • Should now work with xlock and other evil X programs.
  • new option -edgewidth should make it work on Digital Unix X servers.
  • When mouse leaves Win32 machine, it parks the mouse pointer on that machine in a place where you can hardly see it.
  • Applied a patch from Grant McDorman that should make x2vnc work with multiple-screen X servers.
  • Fixed a bug which made x2vnc not work with certain window managers. (Like enlightenment) Thanks to Brad Fitzpatrick for helping me with this one.
  • "xmkmf ; make" should now work.

Usage

Basically, you just run: x2vnc [options] host:display. Where [options] are:
-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 vncpasswd which comes with the X-windows VNC software. If the file does not exist, x2vnc will ask for a password and create the file.
-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 the pointer to and from second computer. The default is "Control-F12", any combination of modifiers can be used, such as "shift-alt-meta-ctrl-F1" (or s-a-m-c-F1).
-edgewidth pixels
This is a workaround for some X servers which do not allow the mouse to go all the way to the edge of the screen. By setting this to 2 or greater, the mouse will be able to reach the x2vnc window and thus warp to the windows machine. The default value is 1.
-desktop desktop-number
With this option, you can make x2vnc non-sticky. This may not work with all window-managers. Note that the first desktop is usually 0 (zero). If you want x2vnc to appear on the last (rightmost) desktop, use -1. This option was especially created with the sawfish edgeflipping in mind, normally you would use "-west -desktop 0" or "-east -destkop -1" with Sawfish to allow edgeflipping to work normally.
-timeout seconds
This options tells x2vnc how long to wait before warping the cursor back to the X screen if there is no activity. The reason for this is that some screen savers, such as xscreensaver, cannot activate while x2vnc is in control of the cursor. The default value is 590 seconds, which is equivalent to 9 minutes and 50 seconds. Using a value of 0 will disable timeouts completely.
-nowheel
Disable mouse wheel emulation. Without this option your wheel will work like arrow up/down, with this option x2vnc will send them as mouse-button 4/5.
-reversewheel
Invert the up/down direction of the mouse wheel emulation.
-scrolllines lines
When using mouse wheel emulation, this selects how many up/down events will be sent for each tick of the mouse wheel.
-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 are working on the local desktop. Requires the MIT-SCREEN-SAVER or XIDLE extension to work properly. If neither of these extensions are present, the remote desktop will always be kept from blanking.
-lockdelay seconds
This is only meaningful when using the -noblank option. When this option is present. With this option, x2vnc will not attempt to wake up the remote screen if you have been idle for more than the specified amount of time. This is useful if you need a password to unlock the remote screen and would rather leave it blanked until you need it.

Some of these options are the same as for the vncviewer that the code came from, so more information can be found at the VNC site.

If you want to run x2vnc between two X displays, you need to install x11vnc on the slave machine, or use x2x instead. If you want to run x2vnc between two Microsoft Windows machines, then you need to install an X server such as eXceed on one of the Windows machines, and compile x2vnc for windows or use Win2VNC instead. Good luck.

If you have a problem with cut'n'paste from the VNC server to the X screen, I recommend using the 3.x version of the VNC server as there are still some outstanding bugs with the 4.x version.

Problems? Questions? Suggestions? Check out the online forum.
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Last modified: June 13th, 2006 - Design by Monica & Fredrik Hübinette