Evolution and Treo 600 sync mini-HOWTO

[Simon Wong <linux thoughtworx com>]

On Wed, 2004-03-03 at 00:20, Dan Freed wrote:
> I have a Treo 600, but I have not had much better luck.  To make it talk at 
> all you will need to add the Treo's Vendor ID and Product ID to the gpilotd.c 
> file and recompile.  That wasn't terribly difficult.  The end result was even 

I assumed that it would be handled solely by the visor kernel module. 
I'll get the code and maybe try it.  See below...

> worst than not talking.  It pretty much just locks my machine up almost every 
> time I sync with gpilot.  I can't find anything in the error log to give me 
> any indication to the problem.  But, when it happens it is locked hard, it 
> will not even respond to pings.

This sounds really bad.  Was it using the applet (which although I
probably couldn't do any better is a pile of %#^#!) which has *never*
worked for me.  I always ended up running gpilotd from the command line
and it was fine with my old Palm Vx.

> I have since switched to using kpilotd.  While not perfect, it at least syncs 
> without locking me up.  

NO!  Gnome all the way :-)

> I would love to use gpilot to sync with Evolution and my company's exchange 

What I have found is multisync (multisync.sourceforge.net) and it seems
to be working fine.

Check it out!

If you are using Debian you need the palm plugin as well as the base
packages (sorry for the crappy indentation):


voyager:~# COLUMNS=150 dpkg -l '*multisync*' | grep ii
ii  libmultisync-plugin-all      0.81-4  Pseudo package wish depends on
all plugins for MultiSync
ii  libmultisync-plugin-backup   0.81-4                          Backup
plug for MultiSync
ii  libmultisync-plugin-evolution0.81-4                          Ximian
Evolution plugin for MultiSync
ii  libmultisync-plugin-irmc     0.81-4                          IrMc
Mobile plugin for MultiSync
ii  libmultisync-plugin-irmc-blueto 0.81-4                          Adds
Bluetooth support to the IrMC plugin
ii  libmultisync-plugin-opie        0.81-4                          Opie
plugin for MultiSync
ii  libmultisync-plugin-palm        0.81-4                          Palm
plugin for MultiSync
ii  libmultisync-plugin-syncml      0.81-4                         
SyncML plugin for MultiSync
ii  multisync                       0.81-4                          A
program to synchronize PIM data


Now the real trick I found is that for the first time you need to use
the "RESYNC"button to get everything to become in sync.

The process I used to get started was:

     I. Setup Palm USB syncing
        (http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-mini/Handspring-Visor.html)
    II. Backup evolution.
   III. Delete all contacts/appointments and tasks in Evolution
    IV. Backup Treo data using pilot-link/Palm Desktop etc
     V. Create the plugin pair in Multisync.
    VI. Plugin your Treo to the USB port and press the hotsync button on
        the Treo FIRST
   VII. Press the RESYNC button in Multisync
  VIII. Wait for it to finish syncing which can take a while the first
        time.
    IX. Thereafter, use the SYNC button to sync AFTER pressing the Treo
        hotsync button FIRST

It seems if for some reason things get whacky you can use the RESYNC
button to get things into a known state.


-- 
Simon Wong <linux thoughtworx com>