Odd hangs with Synergy

[megosdog]

One more update, even though this is marked as "Solved", I still have intermittent problems. The latest discovery seems to have added more clues to the pile. Anyhow, a couple days ago I had Amarok completely freak out and lock up my desktop with a huge blowup of memory, wiping out swap and maxing the system. Once I shut that down, and also removed it from the laptop, a LOT of the lag and hangs seem to have gone away. There's still a few, but most seem to have gone away. So, I'm thinking that's part of the issue. The other part seems to be connected with the ever classic AMD stutter. IE, weird hangs that happen on AMD chips. The desktop is AMD Ryzen, the laptop, AMD A4. The old desktop was an i7. I haven't tested with both systems being Intel, but given the fact that the desktop is having the old AMD stutter issues, I'm really, really starting to think that might be where my issue is.

So I'm gonna hook up my old desktop in the next few days, and connect it on a private lan to my new laptop (also an Intel chip, i3) and see if the stutter appears. If yes, then it's not the chips. If no, then we know where the issue is.

Also, the only reason I keep updating this thread is because, as I learn stuff, and work towards a final, ultimate, satisfactory solution, I want this to be here in case others come across this same issue, as it will give them answers to their issue as well given all the pain and headaches I've come across while trying to debug this myself. So my pain will be their gain.

[madme]

I had this same issue a few months ago. Got an answer in Synergy discord from a developer. I'm not sure if the issue you have is the exact same I did, but I also had stutters every few minutes. No issues when mouse was connected directly, but constant issues if using it through Synergy.
The answer I got is below. I'm not pro enough to determine if there is a simpler/better way to do this, but the approach below did fix my issue. Not a single stutter since then.

The below comes from a Synergy developer:
The stutter issue comes from the package libx11-6 version 2:1.6.4-3ubuntu0.2. Earlier versions don't have this issue.

Solution is to roll back the package and its dependencies, which can be done with the following command:
sudo apt install libx11-xcb-dev:amd64=2:1.6.4-3ubuntu0.1 libx11-6:amd64=2:1.6.4-3ubuntu0.1 libx11-6:i386=2:1.6.4-3ubuntu0.1 libx11-data:amd64=2:1.6.4-3ubuntu0.1 libx11-dev:amd64=2:1.6.4-3ubuntu0.1 libx11-doc:amd64=2:1.6.4-3ubuntu0.1 libx11-xcb1:amd64=2:1.6.4-3ubuntu0.1 libx11-xcb1:i386=2:1.6.4-3ubuntu0.1

Then lock them in place so they don't auto-update, with the following command:
sudo apt-mark hold libx11-6 libx11-6:i386 libx11-data libx11-dev libx11-doc libx11-xcb-dev libx11-xcb1 libx11-xcb1:i386

[megosdog]

Very interesting. In my case it may not be that. I say that because, anytime the mouse locks, if I press the windows key, it unlocks. I'm not sure why that fixes it, but it does. Now, that could be related to the issue you're talking about, and it might not. I'll have to experiment with it more in the coming weeks, but that could be an answer. Hoping Synergy and Barrier get around whatever it is in those packages causing the issue.

[megosdog]

Okay, I finally got those installed and held. Do I need to reboot now, or should I see the improvements right away? And do I need to do that on both machines, or just the child?

[megosdog]

Okay, I've been running with that setup you suggested about rolling back that list of lib files, and I only did it on the client, but not the server, and aside from one weird hang and a partial keyboard freeze that required a restart, I haven't had any further hangs or problems with it, even though that change is only on the client. So I think that finally puts this issue to bed. Although, I won't make that official till I've given it a good month of horsing around to make sure there's nothing else causing the problems. And, since it's an issue in x11, I wonder if the x11 devs will fix their problem so I can remove the upgrade holds, or if synergy/barrier will create a workaround that allows upgrades, but doesn't have the issues with hangs. *shrug* Oh well, we'll see where this goes.

[megosdog]

Okay, final update. Well, I'm hoping *final* update. Anyhow, rolling back the libs on the client seems to have done it. I'm not sure why this worked, but it did. Anyhow, I've had no further issues. The next question is, when will the newer libs come out that permanently fix this stupid hang? Or else a patch from Barrier/Synergy that fixes this once and for all? I'm hoping soon.

[Snowhog]

Have you reported this 'issue' to Synergy? They should know about this, and if they do, "might" have a fix 'in the works'.