[ale] Sync a Palm Tungsten T5 with Linux

[Jason Day]

On Sat, Sep 17, 2005 at 02:12:45PM -0400, Nathan J. Underwood wrote:
[snip]
> Has anyone had any luck with one of these neat but expensive (and 
> seemingly useless, if you use Linux) PDA's?

I don't have a T5, but I've been syncing USB palm devices with linux for
years.  I use J-Pilot, but all the PIMs (evolution, kontact, etc) are
going to use pilot-link for the low-level communications with the palm
device.

What distro are you using?  Modern distros use udev to manage the
devices in /dev.  The USB device files are created when you start the
hotsync, and disappear again when the hotsync completes.  This is just
the way USB works; you just need to configure the permissions on the
device files.  Assuming you are using udev, you can configure your
device files by creating a file named 10-visor.rules in
/etc/udev/rules.d and put the following in it:

BUS="usb", SYSFS{product}="Palm Handheld*", KERNEL="ttyUSB[13579]",
NAME="tts/USB%n", SYMLINK="pilot", GROUP="usb", MODE="0666"

That should all be on one line; it tells udev to create the ttyUSB?
device files with permissions 0666, and creates a symlink from
/dev/pilot to the correct ttyUSB file (the device file could change if
you plug in or remove another USB device, like a scanner, digital
camera, etc).

After you create this file, execute /sbin/udevstart as root.  Make sure
you don't have any sync daemons like kpilotd, gpilotd, or others running
(ps aux | grep pilot).  Then tail /var/log/messages, connect your palm,
and start the hotsync.  Wait for the device files to appear in the log,
then execute "pilot-xfer -p /dev/pilot -l" in a terminal.  That command
will just list the programs and databases installed on your palm, but it
will let you know whether you can communicate with the palm or not.
Once that is working, you can move on to evolution or your pim of
choice.
-- 
Jason Day                                       jasonday at
http://jasonday.home.att.net                    worldnet dot att dot net
 
"Of course I'm paranoid, everyone is trying to kill me."
    -- Weyoun-6, Star Trek: Deep Space 9