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Re: [Evolution] Palm Sync Debugging

So as nobody replied I figured I would try to pick this apart myself. I
have it working fully now so I figured I would publish my process so
others may learn or use my process "for what its worth".

Issue: gpilotd would crash any time I would try to sync my phone with
EAddress conduit enabled.


Resolution:
1) Export all existing card as vcf cards by right clicking each one and
'save as VCard' -> For later easy import.
1) Set baseline of phone by factory defaulting phone and removing all
contact (backing them up of course:>)
        a) Factory defaulting phone is manufacturer specific
        b) 'mv ~/.evolution/addressbook ~/.evolution/addressbook.orig ->
removes all evolution contacts from "personal" contacts.
        c) 'mv ~/MyPilot ~/MyPilot.orig' ->later found contacts were being
synced from this directory due to my configuration of
'gpilotd-control-applet' to do backup
2) Stop all services that could muck stuff up   
        a) 'evolution --force-shutdown' -> stop evolution
        b) 'ps -ef |grep gpilod' -> kill this process ID to stop gpilotd
        c) 'rmmod ehci_hcd' -> SUSE bug which for some reason loads both old
and new USB modules
3) Sart Evolution
4) run 'gpilotd-control-applet' and disable all conduits but 'backup'
5) Log what is going on 'tail -f /var/log/messages' in a seperate shell
to track things
6) plug palm in to cradle. press sync button. This was successful for me
so I went back into 'gpilotd-control-applet' and enabled conduit
EAddress" and this synced fine.
7) Build test user called test with no other details. This synced fine
for me.
8) I moved on to sending myself a vcf file and selecting to add it from
within evolution. Syncing this crashed my phone. I had to again factory
default it. I also found that 'gpilotd' was crashed and had to be
restarted. (when I referance restarting 'gpilotd' I mean stoping it with
kill command as it is not some kind of deamon to work with on that
level)
9) Tried sync again with 'test' card and the imported 'vcf' card (which
was sent from one of my coworkers). This worked this time.
10) Made new email and attached all 240 vcf card files (backup for my
own piece of mind plus it was easy). Opened email and added all my "A"
cards. Synced... crashed... restart 'gpilotd' but this time I did not
have to factory default the phone.
11) Added all B-M cards... took a while to sync (3min) but after it
finished it looked ok... added a few more and then sync failed which
turned out to be a simple restart of 'gpilotd', then it worked fine.
12) Added all the rest of the cards and then synced which worked fine.
13) Now I decided to backup what I had done so far. 'tar -czvf
~/addressbook.tgz ~/.evolution/addressbook ~/MyPilot'
14) I now stared to look into organizing contacts by 'buisness' and
'personal' etc.. this did not work if I did this from evolution but
would retain their catagoies if I did it from the phone. Again it failed
and required 'gpilotd' restart. Then sync worked ok.
15) Updated 'test' user in palm and made sure it synced across, then
deleted it in evolution and verified it was deleted on the palm.
16) Repeated step 15 for a regular contact.

Summery: I believe garbage data and some incompatibilities between
fields that the palm is execting and evolution are trying to feed were
causing the issues. I can not validate any root cause as I am not a
programmer... .and it works ... day job is calling.

Issues Still not working
1) Can not sync work and personal Calendar. This is big as accepting
meetings from sales reps and other Exchange users does not make it onto
my phone unless I manually copy it to my personal calendar.
2) Changes of contact type to "buisness" or "personal" are ignored by
sync.
3) Stability of 'gpilotd' was and issue on setup but now that it is
setup seems to be working fine...knock on wood.
4) Copy and paste of details from a contact such as phone number or
email address STILL does not work from the view pane of evolution. It
insistes on copying the entire contact details... not just the
highlighted text.
5) No root cause of the above sync issues... nothing is ever reported
to /var/log/messages nor to the shell from which I start/ ran
'gpilotd-control-applet' or evolution. Hard to find out what was the
cause without logging.

Hope this helps others in their quest to get palm-sync to work.


On Tue, 2005-01-04 at 09:41 -0500, Jeremey Wise wrote:

I posted this set of questions a few days ago and still no response. I
checked to make sure their is not a seperate user-list related to
evolution-palm-sync but if I am incorrect please RSVP with the list so I
can subscribe to it. 

Hoping for some direction here. I am more that willing to work with the
developers on any issues or debugging required. 

Thanks,

On Fri, 2004-12-31 at 08:46 -0500, Jeremey Wise wrote:

I have one last thing to get evolution to work to its utter perfection.
So far every thing is running swimmingly so I figured I would tackle
PALM sync.

Specs: Thinkpad T41, Samsung i500 (phone/palm), SuSE 9.2,
gnome-pilot-2.0.12-3,pilot-link-0.11.8-126, evolution-pilot-2.0.1-6.2,
evolution-2.0.1-6.2

Error: I run gpilotd-control-applet I can enable "Backup", "Test", and
"ECalendar" but if I enable "ToDo" or "EAddress" gpilotd crashes. I will
then get duplicate contacts in my palm and it also hangs the palm hard. 

Questions:
1) Poking around I find 
wisej wizej:~/.evolution/addressbook/local> directory where I believe
would be all the local contacts. Can I backup just this director and
restore it in my tests to make sure I don't mess up my contacts?
2) Some of my contacts get sent to my palm but not all. I have not found
the key or methodology as to why some are and others aren't. Is their a
set of key fields that must be filled in?
3) Is their a way to sync both local and global ECalendar events to the
palm. I have personal events scheduled and don't want to have them show
up in the corporate calendar so I keep them local, but my goal is to
have my phone remind me if I have a corporate meeting coming up.





-- 
Call if you have any questions,
 
Jeremey Wise
Jeremey Wise Agilysys com
Office: (440)-519-6006
Cell: (216)-647-1121
MCSE,CNE,CSE
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