Re: Best way to migrate to a new device.

[Dagmar d'Surreal <evildagmar gmail com>]

On 7/10/05, Mark Healey <marklist healeyonline com> wrote:
> 
> OK now I'm more confused.  There is one directory called
> "/home/mark/MyPilot" which had everything except for memos
> which are separate files in "/home/mark/memos"
> 
> If I should decide to have several pilots wouldn't this
> confuse things?

I don't know for certain.  You might wanna ask the Gnome Pilot guys
this question, but since it's configuration applet seems to indicate
it can undestand the concept of more than one PDA, there's probably a
mechanism in place to deal with that, or it could be just for show.
 
> Another thing.  I like to keep data files a directory or two
> deep from my user directories (this is a second physical
> hard drive).  It just makes upgrading easier.  For some
> reason when I tied to do this with Gnome Pilot it didn't
> work.  Why?

No idea there aside from maybe you've done something you're not
mentioning that would constitute a material change to the
configuration.  I've had gnome pilot store my files all over the
place, sometimes even on VFAT partitions.  It's not going to care
about the unix filesystem layer.  Are you sure you didn't have any
really odd characters in the path?

> Still another thing.  Some of the apps I want to use are
> wrapped up in a windows installer.  How do I get them out?

WINE, or install them under Windows, and then just make a backup copy
of the pdb file they generate once it's in your PDA.  Frankly, there's
no serious need for any programs to be run under Windows just to
install a file to an entirely separate device--the only exceptions to
this would be if something requries a conduit to talk to the internet
at sync time.  Companies that would insist on a windows executeable
install without a conduit present are probably a bit too puffed up on
self-importance to have decent software anyway.

> I'm thinking I'll just start with it clean reinstall all the
> apps I use (many of them probably have been upgraded since)
> and beam the data from the 7135.

This is an *excellent* idea.  I don't see you mentioning what CPUs the
two devices have, but the different CPUs issue will bite you.  I
originally got a Visor Deluxe several years ago for free, then bought
the Handspring Edge, broke it after a couple years, got another Visor
Deluxe, broke it, then a Visor Neo, which I also broke (they're not
shoddy, I'm just hard on the poor things), and at a few points in
between I ran my apps using the POSE *emulator* and actually migrated
everything between each of these by simply doing a very ham-fisted
_installation_ of all the previously extracted pdb files.  The devices
get fussy when they get a configuration database from a different
device, but it's never something a reset wouldn't cure.  However, when
I recently got a Zire 31, it had a different CPU--the application data
was fine, but like 3/4 of my apps didn't do much more than generate an
error dialog and die.  Heh.  For this upgrade I had to reinstall the
new apps, and then use the regular synching process to get my
addresses and phone numbers (since hotsync is rather cpu-agnostic this
works) moved over.