Re: DateBk5 Categories Support / Speed of Synch

[Marc Schwartz <MSchwartz mn rr com>]

On Sun, 2003-06-15 at 16:50, Scott Garman wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-06-15 at 17:22, Marc Schwartz wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > I just got my RH9/NX70V Clie combination finally synching over USB with
> > Evolution 1.4.  It took some tweaking, but seems to be reasonably
> > working. I have even set up access to the Memory Stick for file transfer
> > which is great.
> 
> Hi Marc,
> 
> If you don't mind, I have a couple of questions for you. I've been
> unable to get my USB Clie to work with RedHat 9 at all, and I thought I
> had heard that the kernel support for USB pilots was broken in this
> release. I'm curious how you did it. So, if your PDA uses the USB visor
> kernel module for syncing, could you please let me know what steps you
> took to get it working?
> 
> Thanks for your time,
> 
> Scott

 and

> Marc,
> 
> I have been having some trouble getting my Handspring Treo to Sync
> over
> USB.  Would you mind sharing what "tweaking" you did to get this to
> work?
> 
> Thanks!
> 
> Alex.


Scott, Alex and the list,

Apologies for the delay in my reply. Between family obligations for
Father's Day on Sunday and work related tasks yesterday and today, I am
finally in a position to take a breath and get back to you with what I
have done.

First and foremost, I am running RH 9 on a Dell i8200 laptop (1.7 Ghz
P4m) in a dual-boot configuration with WinXP Pro using GRUB. 

To the extent that HW combinations make any difference, I have 1,024 Mb
of RAM, 60 Gb HD, UXGA (1600 x 1200) 15 inch LCD panel with an NVidia 64
Mb card using the NVidia (not the default XFree) driver. There is an MS
Internet Keyboard connected to the external KB plug. I have the
'i8kutils' package installed to recognize the multimedia keys, CPU temp,
fans, etc.

There are two USB ports on the laptop and I have a powered USB hub
plugged into one port, to which is connected a MS wheel mouse. Connected
to the other laptop USB port (not the hub) is the Sony Clie cradle.

In terms of RH 9 itself, this was a clean/fresh install from RH 8.0, not
an upgrade. I am running kernel version 2.4.20-18.9 and have installed
all updates via RHN.

Prior to this under RH 8.0, I had a Palm IIIc which I was able to synch
via serial. Under RH 9 I have also been able to have access to flash
memory cards from a digital camera via a USB reader. So with the latter
and of course the mouse functioning properly (along with the internal
joystick and touchpad) I knew that the USB connectivity under RH 9 as
far as those devices, was OK.

Initially, I attempted to synch the Clie with JPilot using pilot-link
version 0.11.5 (the version that ships with RH 9). I had the port set to
/dev/usb/ttyUSB1. That was actually successful, so I had a sense that
USB synching should be possible.

However, I was unable to get the synching to work using gnome-pilot.
Each time I tried to configure the system I would get to the step where
it "should" get the user id from the pilot. It would never work. This
did not work irrespective of speed settings, port settings, protocol
(USB/Serial), creating symlinks to the various USB ports (both in /dev
and in /dev/usb) or setting /dev/pilot to one of the USB ports. I also
upgraded to pilot-link 0.11.7 and gnome-pilot 2.0.9, without resulting
in any success.

Ultimately, I changed my approach and rather than getting the ID from
the Clie, I "set" the ID to what I have been using. That worked and I
was able to finally configure the conduits!  I am using /dev/usb/ttyUSB1
for the port setting and 115,200 for speed. I have enabled the Calendar,
ToDo list and Address conduits. I have not yet tried things like
Avantgo, etc. I have had problems using the Backup conduit with the
synch terminating prematurely even though I increased the time out
setting, so I have that disabled until I can spend more time with it. Of
course, since unfortunately Evo 1.4 does not support Memo/Notes (except
with Exchange), so I am not using that conduit.

One final note on the Linux side. I observed that when I pressed the
synch button on the Clie (WHICH FOR USB YOU MUST DO BEFORE ANY SYNCH
OPERATIONS ON THE PC SIDE, EVEN WITH JPILOT), I did not get consistent
operation. Once I added the "pilot applet" to my Gnome panel, this
resolved that issue so I now get consistent synchs every time I hit the
Clie cradle synch button.

One side effect though was when I got back under Windows, of course the
new ID caused some problems. I ended up having to delete the
sub-directory that my user ID used for synching and do a fresh re-synch.
So I am now in a position of being able to synch under both WinXP and RH
9 with the same user ID.

Now, if I can just get the speed up, I'll basically be set. I'll reply
to David's reply on that subject separately this evening.

I hope that is of help to folks. The key seemed to be taking a proactive
approach in setting the user id. I cannot say whether the upgrades to
pilot-link or gnome-pilot helped, since I have not reverted to the older
versions to see if the synch still works. I figured I have had enough
playing for a while. I have not made any other specific upgrades other
than these and the updates via RHN.

BTW, once I got the Clie synching, I was able to access the internal
Memory Stick (128 Mb) via the following modification to /etc/fstab:

/dev/sda1	/mnt/clie	vfat	noauto,user	0 0

This now allows me to mount the MS using the disk mount applet after 
creating the /mnt/clie directory and rebooting. I have similar settings
for the flash card reader and for read-only access to the WinXP NTFS
partition using the RPM provided at SourceForge.

If there are any follow up questions, let me know and I will do my best
to assist.

Marc