htrefil
Switching between multiple clients.
Hello.
Sorry if this is answered somewhere. I've searched the closed "issues" but do not find anything.
Trying to update my home systems - I have been running i3wm on X11 for years and finally getting around to trying to modernize my systems and make the switch to wayland
I have been using synergy and all of the different forks for years. I have several linux machine and a Mac mini Access to the mac mini can be done via VNC so losing that as a cliient is no big deal to me.
What I am trying to do is to replace i3wm with wayland + hyprland via omarchy and since I work 40 hours a week on my systems, I am currently highly dependant upon synergy (or currently trying desktopflow)
progress
I've compiled the latest version from github (cloned on Aug 29, 2025) (not available in dnf although there is a copr https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/bsherman1/rkvm/packages/).
I've generated the certificates and distributed the service files and exes out to the different machines and everything is working with a Fedora 42 i3wm X11 machine running as the rkvm-server and omarchy running as a client.
I've got this all working fine
right-shift+scrollock configured as my hot key which allows me to switch to a machine running omarchy (hyprland on Arch) This works fine
not working
What is not clear anywhere is being able to switch to a second client. which the readme says is possible with : Switching between different clients is done by a configurable keyboard shortcut.
I am trying to configure a second fedora machine (F41)
Do I need some how to set a second hot key combination to switch from the F42 rkvm server to F41 rkvm client? seems the F41 client has connected properly as the journalctl shows the service itself is active successfully
e.g. F41 is on the left most, so hot key = right-shift + scroll lock omarchy hotkey = left-shift + scroll lock is this possible?
it seems like which ever machine I restart rkvm-client on last becomes the only available client machine
.eg. now that I've restarted on my F41 laptop on the left, the hot key switches to it properly
$ cat server.toml
listen = "192.168.29.3:5258"
# See `switch-keys.md` in the repository root for the list of all possible keys.
switch-keys = ["right-shift", "scroll-lock"]
# Whether switch key presses should be propagated on the server and its clients.
# Optional, defaults to true.
propagate-switch-keys = true
certificate = "/etc/rkvm/certificate.pem"
key = "/etc/rkvm/key.pem"
# This is to prevent malicious clients from connecting to the server.
# Make sure this matches your client's config.
#
# Change this to your own value before deploying rkvm.
password = "XXXXXX"
--------------------------------
cat /etc/rkvm/client.toml
server = "192.168.29.3:5258"
certificate = "/etc/rkvm/certificate.pem"
# This is to prevent malicious clients from connecting to the server.
# Make sure this matches your server's config.
#
# Change this to your own value before deploying rkvm.
password = "XXXXXX"
client.toml is identical on the 2 client machines omarcy and F41
I think probably the answer here is to run 2 copies of the rkvm-server service one to switch to the left one to switch to the right same certificate can be used, would just require configuring the second server instance (and the client instance it would use) to connect on another port. the over head with rkvm seems very low so i dont think this would cause any issues.
[left pc] <- port 5258 -> [server] <- port 5259 -> [right pc] Going to eventually try this and see if it works.
I did something similar yesterday by setting up a ring where each machine N is configured as the server for machine N+1 and as the client for machine N-1, with RCTRL+#N being the shortcut to hop from node N-1 to node N. Note that the final machine in the ring can't actually hop back around to node 0 - RCTRL+0 would just return control to 0, with 1 still controlling 2, 2 controlling 3, etc, so you'd have to manually unwind via RCTRL+N,N-1...0, and scripting it further didn't seem like the right approach.
