I'm running Red Hat 9. Previously, I used the built in pilot-xfer program with my i300, writing to /dev/pilot, but now with the usb interface things have changed.

Anyone using linux to sync their i500? Suggestions?

Thanks.
Gary

You should look into Coldsync, which claims to support USB devices. I haven't tried this myself, just did a quick Google search and found it.

http://www.coldsync.org/

-Jason

Has anyone tried a USB to serial converter? If I can get this to work, I can go back to my old sync method?

i'm synching to an openbsd machine with coldsync, but through the internet. i didn't really try to get local synching through usb working.

i'm writing some conduits for the mail and calendar to sync with my local mail client (mutt) and calendar system located on the server. i just run 'coldsync -ms' on the server and do a hotsync on the i5 through the internet.

kind of slow, but very useful being able to sync from anywhere.

You could sync the i500 via serial. The i500 interface supports BOTH serial and USB -- there are plenty of posts on this forum about it. There is no i500 serial cable sold for it, but the (somewhat pricey) i300 serial cable works, I'm told. I'll know first hand later this week when mine arrives in the mail.

I'm syncing to a Win95 machine (fast, cheap, out of control) that I will upgrade to Linux in a few months, so I definitely want serial working as a slow fallback, and then once the Linux machine is up I can look into USB.

Syncing via the net / over-the-air only works if you have your machine exposed directly on the net at all times (or a hole in your firewall) which may be OK for a BSD box but no way am I doing that with a Windows machine

Currently I'm still carrying my old Handspring Visor around with me because I can't sync my primary home machine to the i500 yet. Soon, my pretty ...

Just an FYI...

I sync to a windows NT (no USB support) machine using the i300 serial cable.

Works flawlessly.

TMR

OK everyone, don't buy another i300 serial cable. You can sync with the i500 cradle, yep. I just did it after two straight days and nights of trying different things. Here are the basics (I run Gentoo, so I am not sure exactly how this works on the more popular distros like Redhat, but if there is enough interest, I will install and figure it out if the following guidelines don't work).

First I used kernel-2.6.0-test9-mm5. Where you see my kernel version, you should substitute your kernel version. I think any kernel > 2.4.21 will do because it has the critical visor module which makes this work. So if you don't know whether or not you have this module, look in /lib/modules/2.6.0-test9-mm5/ for:

2.6.x
kernel/drivers/usb/serial/usbserial.ko
kernel/drivers/usb/serial/visor.ko

2.4.x kernel series
kernel/drivers/usb/serial/usbserial.o
kernel/drivers/usb/serial/visor.o

If you have these you should be good to go. The one thing that got me was that I didn't have Serial Generic selected when I compiled my kernel. Execution of the following command:

grep USB \ /usr/src/linux-2.6.0-test9-mm5/.config | \
grep -v "not set"

should show at least the following:

# USB Serial Converter support
CONFIG_USB_SERIAL=m
CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_GENERIC=y
CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_VISOR=m

If not then you will have to role (correction - should be roll) your own kernel to add this support. Redhat rpm kernels usually have everything compiled, so there shouldn't be a need to role your own kernel for Redhat. If you need help though check google. If you still can't get it, post a reply and I will try to help you. By the way, if you recompile the kernel, remember that you will have to reboot, one of the only reasons I ever reboot Linux.

Second here are my program versions.

jpilot-0.99.5
pilot-link-0.11.8

I emerged (compiled from source for Gentoo) the above programs. Now execute:

modprobe visor
lsmod

This should show many modules to include:

Module Size Used by
visor 17004 0
usbserial 30188 1 visor
...
usbcore 122548 5 visor,usbserial,uhci_hcd

If your system is set up similar to mine then you can do the following after you sit the phone in the cradle:

more /proc/bus/usb/devices

T: Bus=01 Lev=00 Prnt=00 Port=00 Cnt=00 Dev#= 1 Spd=12 MxCh= 2
B: Alloc= 0/900 us ( 0%), #Int= 0, #Iso= 0
D: Ver= 1.10 Cls=09(hub ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 8 #Cfgs= 1
P: Vendor=0000 ProdID=0000 Rev= 2.06
S: Manufacturer=Linux 2.6.0-test9-mm5 uhci_hcd
S: Product=UHCI Host Controller
S: SerialNumber=0000:00:12.2
C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=40 MxPwr= 0mA
I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=09(hub ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=hub
E: Ad=81(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS= 2 Ivl=255ms

T: Bus=01 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=01 Cnt=01 Dev#= 6 Spd=12 MxCh= 0
D: Ver= 1.01 Cls=02(comm.) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=16 #Cfgs= 1
P: Vendor=04e8 ProdID=6601 Rev= 0.00
S: Manufacturer=SAMSUNG Electronics Co.,Ltd.
S: Product=SAMSUNG CDMA Technologies
S: SerialNumber=

C:* #Ifs= 2 Cfg#= 1 Atr=e0 MxPwr=100mA
I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=02(comm.) Sub=02 Prot=01 Driver=(none)
E: Ad=81(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS= 16 Ivl=32ms
I: If#= 1 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=0a(data ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=(none)
E: Ad=8a(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl=0ms
E: Ad=0b(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl=0ms

Notice the Samsung CDMA as the product.

Now hit the sync button on the cradle, and look at the following nodes:

If you are NOT running usbdevfs:
/dev/ttyUSB0
/dev/ttyUSB1

If you ARE running usbdevfs (a wise choice.):
/dev/usb/tts/0
/dev/usb/tts/1

Now make a link for your Palm pilot depending on the which of the above you see. This will show up red if you are using colorized ls because the target may not exist. If you are using devfs:

cd /dev
ln -s usb/tts/1 pilot

If not then:

cd /dev
ln -s ttyUSB1 pilot

Here is what mine looks like after I hit the hotsync button:

ls -al /dev/pilot

lr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 9 Nov 24 23:36 /dev/pilot -> usb/tts/1

ls -al /dev/usb/tts/

total 0
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 0 Dec 31 1969 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 0 Dec 31 1969 ..
crw-rw---- 1 root usb 188, 0 Dec 31 1969 0
crwxrwxrwx 1 root usb 188, 1 Dec 31 1969 1

You may have to hit sync a couple of times to check for all the devices and files. Also when the sync is active you can rerun the following command to see the device is now a Palm:

more /proc/bus/usb/devices

T: Bus=01 Lev=00 Prnt=00 Port=00 Cnt=00 Dev#= 1 Spd=12 MxCh= 2
B: Alloc= 0/900 us ( 0%), #Int= 0, #Iso= 0
D: Ver= 1.10 Cls=09(hub ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 8 #Cfgs= 1
P: Vendor=0000 ProdID=0000 Rev= 2.06
S: Manufacturer=Linux 2.6.0-test9-mm5 uhci_hcd
S: Product=UHCI Host Controller
S: SerialNumber=0000:00:12.2
C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=40 MxPwr= 0mA
I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 1 Cls=09(hub ) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=hub
E: Ad=81(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS= 2 Ivl=255ms

T: Bus=01 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=01 Cnt=01 Dev#= 7 Spd=12 MxCh= 0
D: Ver= 1.00 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 8 #Cfgs= 1
P: Vendor=0830 ProdID=0001 Rev= 1.00
S: Manufacturer=Palm, Inc.
S: Product=Palm Handheld
S: SerialNumber=SPHX3FF26779
C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=c0 MxPwr= 2mA
I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 4 Cls=ff(vend.) Sub=00 Prot=00 Driver=usbserial
E: Ad=01(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 16 Ivl=0ms
E: Ad=82(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 16 Ivl=0ms
E: Ad=03(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl=0ms
E: Ad=84(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl=0ms

If you do not see the nodes, or you do not see the nodes appear on their own:

mknod /dev/ttyUSB0 c 188 0
mknod /dev/ttyUSB1 c 188 1
or
mkdir /dev/usb/tts
mknod /dev/usb/tts/0 c 188 0
mknod /dev/usb/tts/1 c 188 1

Now in the pilot app, in File > Preferences > Settings, set serial port to /dev/pilot. This should pretty much do it.

Now press sync in jpilot, then sync on the Palm. It should work, but the setup can be so different between Linux versions that I cannot guarantee it will work. Like I said above I got it to run under Gentoo Linux with the app and kernel versions listed above. Hope this leads you in the right direction and keeps you from spending extra money.

One more thing about setting up syncing with the i500 base. After another two days of trying to install apps, I decided to run strace on an installation using pilot-xfer -i [app].prc. I had some successes but many failures. I also had the jpilot serial rate set very high, 57600 or greater, and the install failed there as well. Because terminal output is slow, the strace slowed down the transfer enough to let it succeed. So I decided to change the serial rate in jpilot to 38400. An viola, app installation worked. Don't know exactly how to set the rate for pilot-xfer but now that jpilot works, I probably won't use pilot-xfer except for Palm database maintenance, not installation. Hope this also helps someone.

Thanks for the great writeup! Um, it's "roll your own", not "role your own". The reference is to rolling you own "cigarettes" using Zig-zag paper and your choice of tobacco.

I have now gotten jpilot to sync at a serial rate of H460800. As a matter of fact is seems to be more stable at this speed. I got this to work when I upgraded my kernel to 2.6.0-test10-mm1. I knew I had serial problems with 2.6.0-test9-mm5 because my UPS monitoring software couldn't connect to the Belkin UPS via the serial port. It now can and it seems that serial support has stabilized for the moment.

Has anyone running Linux been able to mount the CD under Linux? I can't seem to read it. It could just be a bad CD, I suppose -- I have no problem reading other CDs intended for Windows.

(I mostly just want to get a copy of the goodies included with the CD, I don't need the sync software, I'm using pilot-link for that.)

Daniel