Hi everyone, I recently upgraded to the 2.6.15 kernel and I am having difficulties getting my USB PDA to sync. At first I thought the issue was with Linux not seeing the USB ports but I saw a suggestion to use kpilot. I thought that sounded like a good idea. I started it up and it asked me to configure it with the option of automatically detecting the settings. I didn't know what the original setting were so I selected that option and guess what.... it detected the PDA! As such I know it sees the USB ports.

Perhaps this has something to do with the configuration file being out of date. To fix this problem it instructs me to 'run kpilot' but that is the program that is instructing me to do this. Any suggestions as to what to do?

hmmmmmm....it says:

Version: KPilot 4.6.0 (blivit)
Version: pilot-link 0.11.8
Version: KDE 3.5.3
Version: Qt 3.3.6

HotSync Log

13:59:45 Starting the KPilot daemon ...
13:59:45 Daemon status is `not running'
14:05:00 Changed username to `Mike Havens'.

further:

I type 'sudo kpilot&' to start the program and right when kpilot appears I get an error message on rxvt:
ERROR: Communication problem with kpilot, it
probably crashed.
__________________
:-)~Mike~(-:

Well I doubt whether I can actually be of much help here. I don't know to much about this, but I do have a (Palm based) Treo 650 smartphone and use kpilot/kontact/kmail, and yes I do have occassional problems syncing it.

All I can do is itemise a few of the problems I've had doing the sync.

So, one snag that I found was actually crashing the daemon during a sync.

My cure was noting down the names of the files (actually database files I believe - and both java type files). The 1 I can remember the name of, was J9 MIDP Bundle. I just added it to the "comma seperated" list of files that are not backed up - it then threw up another one - the name of which I don't recall, but after I added that it sync'd ok (actually I think it's dependant on which distro you're using, because "it" worked out of the box with are relatively recent version of mandriva, but Kubuntu and kanotix both needed that fix).

More recently (and mainly due to the "political" spat between the developers at kanotix - prompting a change to Sidux - which is pure Debian SID) my treo wouldn't connect/start the sync. I was completely stumped by that.

So after a bit of a surf, started looking into some of the things others had posted - including whether the system was seeing "it" as /dev/pilot or /dev/usb or /dev/tty1 or whatever. I dug through the system and found that in /dev there was a couple of possible listings - not having any idea of which it might be, opened the window full screen and hit the hotsync button on the device plug - which showed me that it was /dev/pilot (yours may well be different).

On checking the properties, I observed that it was "owned" by root and part of the dialout group. Which resulted in the "easy" cure of just adding my user to the dialout group. From there, the sync was straight forward.

The "versions" I'm using are

Version: KPilot 4.9.0 (depth9)
Version: pilot-link 0.12.1
Version: KDE 3.5.5
Version: Qt 3.3.7

Plus I'm using a 2.6.18.6 kernel

Dunno if any of that will sound even vaguely familiar enough to point you in the right direction or not.

regards

John

p.s. You could also do worse than check out the treoquestions/forum listed on the RHS main menu for this. I know it's mainly about the smartphones, but I'm guessing that sync/connection would be same/similar and may offer some ideas. Oh and if you included what distro you're using with your profile info (on left), then someone may be able to offer distro specific advice.

thanks for your suggestions, buddy. I am not sure what you are talking about so I will drag your suggestion and this old computer to the next install-fest and see if anyone there can help. I sure wish I was more computer literate!

bmike1,

I'm presuming that your PDA uses the same type of plug that my smartphone does i.e. that the plug that goes into the device has a "sync" button. If so, then plug it in, open your file manager (erm you don't mention a distro so I don't know whether it'll be either konqueror or nautilius).

Navigate to /dev (though again, it depends on distro whether you need to be root or user). If theres an entry for /dev/pilot (and as before, the plug has a sync button) press the button and see if the icon changes - you might need to do that a couple of times as it depends on how your system see's the device - so if theres no /dev/pilot you may need to look at /dev/usb and look for a change, likewise at /dev/tty1 (or even /dev/tty0).

Any changes that you see might give you some sort of idea about where to be looking for the problem, especially if you managed to get it working previously.

As you can see from what I posted, I'm using a later version of kpilot, kde (and I'm sure other stuff aswell as kernel). Hell it's even a different device, but as it's based on the same OS i.e. Palm and connects via USB, I was just trying to explain ways of checking various things that might be affected. Like you mention a recent change of kernel so has the new one got support for Palm devices/OS ? it's not gonna be _the_ answer, but suggestions of where to be looking/searching for clues.

HTH some

regards

John