pilot-xfer?
 

It's been suggested that I manually try to install to my PDA with pilot-xfer to locate any possible error messages in order to trouble-shoot JPilot.

I typed pilot-xfer into my PC's terminal and it responded with what looks like a basic description of the program. I did a search for pilot-xfer online and I'm getting lists of commands to type in, but that's not helpful enough for me to know where to begin.

Is this already on my Ubuntu 7.10, or do I need to download it? How do I do that? Is there a tutorial for beginners? I've had Linux for a week, and running a program that uses only CLI will be a big learning curve. I've not yet installed any programs that required anything beyond one "sudo apt-get install" command.

If you typed the command and it came back with output, then it is installed. pilot-xfer is part of pilot-link, which JPilot uses to communicate with devices.

A concept you will need to come to terms with in the Linux world is that very few applications actually do all of the work themselves. JPilot itself is just buttons and some displays, it can't really do anything. When you press the buttons in JPilot, it passes arguments to programs like pilot-xfer to do the actual work for it. So if you know the arguments for the individual utilities and tools, you can jump to the command line and run them yourself, skipping the GUI all together so that you can see any error messages or that sort of thing.

To get more information on a command, try prefixing it with "man", short for manual. It will display the applications complete manual for you to browse.

At any rate, to transfer a file to the Palm you need to give a command like:

Run that command with the .prc you want to install, and note any errors it comes back with. This will greatly aid in figuring out where the problem is.

Thank you - it took some doing, but starting with your instructions, and with some other help, I was able to install a program with pilot-xfer. There were no errors, the program installed, so I have no clues as to why the install doesn't work in JPilot - but at least I can still use my PDA with Ubuntu. :)

Is there perhaps a newer version of JPilot available? Front-end programs like that occasionally get "out of sync" with the core tools they utilize, which can cause problems. For instance, it is possible a particular command could have been removed or somehow changed in pilot-link, and the version of JPilot you have has not been updated to take this into account.

I only just installed Ubuntu a week ago. But I hadn't installed any updates until this morning (although I didn't see anything related to JPilot in the updates list). I was wondering if installing the Ubuntu updates might help. I'll try a JPilot install again and post an update soon.