Connection Linux --> PDA WindowsCE
 

Good morning,
My question is this Debian-Jessie:
In the company I have a PDA "Datalogic Memor X3 (WindowsCE)" USB connected "/ dev / ttyUSB0" used for making stock.

Currently with Debian Wheezy I get copy the "\ My Documents \ Datos.dat" file with the

"apt-get install synce-hal librapi2-tools"
https://packages.debian.org/es/wheezy/synce-hal
https://packages.debian.org/es/wheezy/librra-tools

package directly from a "sript" no need desktop.

My problem is that there is no package in Jessie.
I have the "deb" installation for Wheezy,
how could I do to install in Jessie?

Try the "synce-serial" existing in Jessie, installs and configures well, but can not find documentation to create a "script" to back pack.

You know any package that can connect to a WindowsCE, console or desktop?

As a last alternative would change Debian for windows, but I would not take a step back.

Thanks for reading and provide some knowledge or idea.

Well, all other things being equal, you should be able to just run
If this is a mission critical system, I'd try it in a VM first so you don't bork up your good system.

Thanks for your interest,Ihatewindows522,
no problem to do all kinds of tests, I use a non-critical computer exclusively for test before passing it to production-computer .

I made copies of the depends of synce-hal from Wheezy ==> Jessie.

and binaries files:

dpkg -i synce-hal_0.15-1_amd64.deb
Ejecute file # synce-pls

Hi barnarasta, thanks for inviting me to this forum ;)

Unfortunately, in the past, I didn't succeed trying to connect a WinCE device to a Linux PC with SynCE; more to say, currenlty I don't have a WinCE device at hand... So, related to this particular issue, maybe I'm more newbie than you :)

Well, from what I've read here:

• to prepare a working environment on a fresh Debian Wheezy system, you only need to install 2 packages: "synce-hal" and "librapi2-tools";
• after installing those packages, the only utility you use to work with your WinCE device is "synce-pls".

Is it right?

Welcome to the forum bobbid,
I confirm:
I'm using Wheezy with 'synce-hal' to read data from a (USB) PDA-DataLogix-Memor X3 with WindowsCE 6.0 from console.

The commands I use a '/bin/bash' are:
synce-pls / ===> to list the contents of the PDA.
synce-pcp ":\My Documents\Datos.dat" /tmp/datos.dat ===> copy Datos.dat the file (PDA) to Wheezy/tmp/datos.dat
synce-prm ":\My Documents\Datos.dat" ====> to delete the file to the PDA.

There are other commands that you can see and experience in /usr/bin/synce* I do not use.
I think you can also experiment with any mobile phone that has WindowsCE.

When I connect the PDA to the USB it appears on /dev/ttyUSB0.
and /var/log/syslog message:

# lsusb
# ifconfig

barnarasta, thanks for verbose logs.

Actually, both of the discussed Wheezy binary packages, synce-hal and librapi2-tools, depend (directly or indirectly) on hal package; HAL is a framework which had been abandoned upstream and was finally removed from Debian in 2014.

Those SynCE packages <synce-hal (0.15-1.1), libsynce (0.15-1.1), librapi2 (0.15-2.2) and maybe more> had become unmaintained (you've already read my "advertisement" on SF forums) and outdated in Debian, and were eventually removed in 2013 because of HAL dependencies. They've come from an old SynCE release 0.15.

And synce-serial (0.11-5.3) is even older (SynCE 0.11); it has been probably just overlooked.

---

I've looked into the "synce-core-0.17.tar.gz" tarball from the current synce-core, and it looks like the "pls", "pcp" and other utilities are now there.

Don't know for sure whether any other software packages are needed for it to work.

---

Probably, this PPA needs to be checked, to avoid packaging / compiling SynCE from scratch in Debian (maybe the packages can even be built with pbuilder without modifications).

---

Stay in touch for updates...

Thanks for the info,
I look down the "synce-core-0.17.tar.gz",
I do not have much knowledge but will try to compile it in Jessie.

Feel free to play; anyway, I wouldn't recommend installing too much software via the "make install" from root, since that can leave lots of garbage in the system; it's better to compile in a home directory... or use some discardable environment (chroot or VM solutions like VirtualBox, QEMU etc.)

---

Good news: "synce-core" source package from the aforementioned Ubuntu PPA, namely version for Ubuntu Trusty (" 0.17-0ubuntu0~ppa1~trusty2 "), compiles well on Debian with a little modification (replacing "dhcp3-client" with "isc-dhcp-client" in Build-Depends).

Good night bobbid, I explain what i was doing for Jessie
compile the "synce-core-0.17.tar.gz" tarball downloaded to
http://sourceforge.net/projects/sync...CE/synce-core/

I installed the equipment to perform the compilation:
apt-get install build-essential
apt-get install kernel-package
apt-get install module-assistant

then perform the extraction of 'gz' and between the appropriate folder.
tar xvfz synce-core-0.17.tar.gz
cd synce-core-0.17
First attempt
./configure
Answered:
'apt-get install pkg-config'
Second attempt
Search and find the required packages:
apt-get install libgtk2.0-dev

third attempt
and I can not do more research, but the fact is that now if you do not know how to
continue. :)

In your note read:
"Little modification (Replacing" dhcp3-client "with" isc-dhcp-client "in Build-Depends)."
It is very interesting!

I look in the file "configure" the expression "dhcp3-client" to replace him, but found nothing,
that file is?

Thanks for your help and advice.

building Debian packages
 

barnarasta, now you see how complex the manual compilation process can be :)
Fortunately, when someone has prepared a package for Debian, it is no longer necessary.

---

Regarding the modifications, I didn't mean an upstream tarball from here;
instead, I mean a source package from this SynCE PPA (PPA is for personal package archives, unofficial Ubuntu repositories). To get the "synce-core" source package from there:

1. click "View package details", and it'll go to https://launchpad.net/~synce/+archiv.../ppa/+packages
2. select "Trusty" (it's the newest Ubuntu release in that list) instead of "Any series" and click "Filter", so it'll go to https://launchpad.net/~synce/+archiv..._filter=trusty
3. click on the "synce-core" package name (currently, it's "synce-core - 0.17-0ubuntu0~ppa1~trusty2");
4. download the source package files from the opened page ("synce-core_0.17.orig.tar.gz", "synce-core_0.17-0ubuntu0~ppa1~trusty2.debian.tar.gz", "synce-core_0.17-0ubuntu0~ppa1~trusty2.dsc").

You can notice there are also some binary packages there (*.deb), but they are built for Ubuntu Trusty and probably not compatible with Debian Jessie.

---

Source package modification.

Place the downloaded files ("synce-core_0.17.orig.tar.gz", "synce-core_0.17-0ubuntu0~ppa1~trusty2.debian.tar.gz", "synce-core_0.17-0ubuntu0~ppa1~trusty2.dsc") together in a dedicated folder (e. g., /home/user/synce-core), to be safe.

Install dpkg-dev:
# apt-get install dpkg-dev

$ cd /home/user/synce-core

Unpack the source package (will create a directory named "synce-core-0.17"):
$ dpkg-source -x synce-core_0.17-0ubuntu0~ppa1~trusty2.dsc

Edit build-depends (replace "dhcp3-client" with "isc-dhcp-client") in "syncecore/debian/control" and add a new entry into "synce-core-0.17/debian/changelog", to state it's a new package version; here's an intuitive diff:
Build an updated version of the source package (and notice the newly created files: "synce-core_0.17-0.1.debian.tar.xz" & "synce-core_0.17-0.1.dsc"):
$ dpkg-source -b synce-core-0.17

---

Preparing the build system (on Debian Jessie; needs access to Debian repositories, e. g., your default Debian Internet mirror).

Install pbuilder:
# apt-get install pbuilder

Create a configuration file ("/root/.pbuilderrc"; needs superuser privileges) with the following contents:
Create the base build image:
# pbuilder create

In case you've created the base image long time ago, update it:
# pbuilder update

---

Actual binary packages building process from the source package.

Go to the directory where your source package's files ("synce-core_0.17.orig.tar.gz", "synce-core_0.17-0.1.debian.tar.xz", "synce-core_0.17-0.1.dsc") are stored:
$ cd /home/user/synce-core

Start the builder:
# pbuilder build synce-core_0.17-0.1.dsc

Wait...

If everything finishes well, you'll see a bunch of new files:
$ ls /var/cache/pbuilder/result
The highlighted ones are binaries; the rest is a repack of the source package, including a description of changes.

---

Then, you'll probably need to test installing some of those packages (the last command should install the missing dependencies, if any; it can also remove some packages with non-satisfied depends):
$ cd /var/cache/pbuilder/result
# dpkg -i libsynce0_0.17-0.1_amd64.deb synce-dccm_0.17-0.1_amd64.deb synce-tools_0.17-0.1_amd64.deb
# apt-get -f install

---

And finally, you can try testing the device connectivity etc. ;)

Thanks for all this information, I'm really learning a lot.

Problems arose to build new package because the file format "changelog".

Summary of the activity:

1) Make the working directory <=============OK
/home/user/synce-core
--------------------------------------
2) Download Files in /home/user/synce-core <==== OK
synce-core_0.17-0ubuntu0~ppa1~trusty2.debian.tar.gz
synce-core_0.17-0ubuntu0~ppa1~trusty2.dsc
synce-core_0.17.orig.tar.gz
--------------------------------------
3) Install ,configure pbuilder and create <====== OK
-------------------------
4) dpkg-source -x synce-core_0.17-0ubuntu0~ppa1~trusty2.dsc
------------- It is self-created synce-core-0.17 <=============== OK
5) /home/user/synce-core/synce-core-0.17/debian file control
replacing 'dhcp3-client" ==> "isc-dhcp-client", lines 5 and 97 <=========== OK
---------------------------------------------
6) /home/user/synce-core/synce-core-0.17/debian file changelog
--------------------------------------------------------
7) Build an updated source package
# cd /home/user/synce-core
# dpkg-source -b synce-core-0.17
It has these errors:
I did the same order with the original 'changelog' and also gave the same type of error.

Maybe Jessie format for CHANGELOG has changed. ???

Thanks again for your time.

I discovered the "DCH" tool to build and validate "changelog".

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/...an1/dch.1.html

Tomorrow I test it and comment.

barnarasta, I supposed you're familiar with diff format, sorry;
in short words, it's a summary of differences between the original and modified files: "+" meaning insertion, "-" meaning deletion;
for detailed description, please refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diff_u...Unified_format and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patch_...Usage_examples.

-

BTW, just to make sure everyone understands this forum thread correctly: command lines starting with "$" are meant to be run from an ordinary users; "#" means superuser ("root"), and are supposed to be executed with "sudo" (or switching to the root user with "su" at first and then running that command).

---

Oh, I've missed one instance of "dhcp3-client" to replace; thanks for noticing!
I haven't tried to install the built packages, so I've missed something.
So I've just updated the long post ;)

---

Yes, you can create new Debian package changelog entries with "debchange" ("dch"). It's included in the "devscripts" Debian package. Great find :)

Continuing WORK
6)# cd /home/user/synce-core/synce-core-0.17
dch -v 0.17-0.1
autogenerate changelog
# dpkg-source -b synce-core-0.17
newfiles => synce-core_0.17-0.1.debian.tar.xz , synce-core_0.17-0.1.dsc

# pbuilder build synce-core_0.17-0.1.dsc
and several minutes later ........
/var/cache/pbuilder/result
TEST INSTALLATION
# dpkg -i libsynce0_0.17-0.1_amd64.deb =====> OK
# dpkg -i synce-dccm_0.17-0.1_amd64.deb =====> OK
# dpkg -i synce-tools_0.17-0.1_amd64.deb =====> OK
# dpkg -i synce-doc_0.17-0.1_all.deb ========> OK
# dpkg -i libsynce0-dev_0.17-0.1_amd64.deb =====> OK
# dpkg -i libsynce-dbg_0.17-0.1_amd64.deb =======> OK
# dpkg -i python-rapi2_0.17-0.1_amd64.deb =======> OK




ls -1 /usr/bin/synce*
ls -1 /usr/lib/synce-core
It seems that everything is in place,
but I can not verify it completely because I have no PDA now at this time, to test the communication.
On Monday I hope to get them to leave me one PDA to the ultimate test.