Configure Synergy Forward/Back Mouse Buttons

Authors:
Tags: Windows, Linux, Synergy

Syngery is a software solution that allows sharing of your mouse and keyboard across multiple computers and operating systems. It even has functionality to allow copying and pasting between those systems seamlessly.

For reasons im not sure of, when trying to use the client with some linux systems, it does not properly support the forward and back mouse buttons (mouse4/mouse5) commonly used for web browsing navigation. To enable this functionality i had to edit the synergy server configuration by hand with a couple extra settings.

Below is an excerpt of the config file with the two required lines changed under section: options

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section: options
    heartbeat = 5000
    relativeMouseMoves = false
    screenSaverSync = true
    win32KeepForeground = false
    clipboardSharing = true
    switchCorners = none 
    switchCornerSize = 0
    mousebutton(4) = keystroke(WWWBack)
    mousebutton(5) = keystroke(WWWForward)
end

For reference i am using a windows based "server" and linux based "clients" using Synergy 1.8. I have not yet upgraded to a 2.x license as it is still lacking in features compared to the 1.x branch, so i am unsure is this is something that's been fixed in 2.x.