Posts Tagged by PalmPilot

Migrating from Palm to Android

17-Jan-2012 Posted by Sonia Hamilton under , ,
2 Comments

My venerable Palm Treo 550 is showing it’s age (as is the company), so I’ve been looking for a new phone platform to migrate to for a few years. And since I’m now working for Google, Android is the obvious choice (dog-fooding and all that).

Some tricks and tools I’ve find useful in my migration from Palm to Android:

  • Synthesis SyncML clients are great for syncing to a SyncML server. Not $free like Funambol, but Synthesis has nice extra things like syncing of memos.
  • for a SyncML server I’m using Memotoo. I could’ve setup my own SyncML server, but at $5/month Memotoo is cheap, and I know it works…
  • on the Android Market there’s a Keyring client, thus enabling me to bring across my Palm Treo Keyring (full of Secret Squirrel Stuff, like passwords for servers, etc). I’m yet to work out how I’m going to back this up, but probably something with Memotoo

So, I’m using SyncML clients on my Treo and Android to sync up to Memotoo, keeping both in sync. Memotoo gives me a nice desktop that sort of replaces the JPilot desktop (so I can type stuff in at a real keyboard and sync it to my phones). Shweeeet, I’m almost migrated!

 

Syncing Palm Pilot with JPilot and visor on Ubuntu

04-May-2009 Posted by Sonia Hamilton under ,
4 Comments

(Updated May/09 for Ubuntu 8.10/Ibex): for a long time I couldn’t get JPilot syncing with my Palm Pilot on Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10. Turns out I wasn’t reading my own instructions… here’s the cleaned up version:

  • load visor module sudo modprobe visor and check loaded lsmod | grep visor
  • add visor module to /etc/modules
  • click sync button on Palm Pilot and check USB devices are being created:
    • in one terminal, tail -f /var/log/syslog /var/log/messages
    • in a second terminal, check the ownership of links ls -al /dev/ttyUSB* and check you are a member of the appropriate group (usually dialout) grep dialout /etc/group
  • sudo aptitude install jpilot and start JPilot
  • read this step carefully: no need to change the Serial Port setting in Preferences – JPilot will pick up the correct one on the first sync (which is now unexpectedly Other rather than /dev/ttyUSBO or usb:)
  • read this step carefully: from jpilot File > Install User, click sync button on Palm Pilot, count to 5, then click Install User button in JPilot dialog box
  • click sync button on Palm Pilot, count to 5, then click Sync in JPilot
  • if syncing isn’t working (especially on a machine that’s been upgraded from an older version of Ubuntu), try closing JPilot, mv .jpilot .jpilot.bak, restarting JPilot, then doing the Install User steps again

See also:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=79965

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/13/0234225

http://www.linuxmuse.com/articles.php?action=printerf&article=29

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=177780

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=221854

http://www.rockhopper.dk/linux/hardware/pda.html#chap5_sect1

http://archives.mandrivalinux.com/expert/2003-02/msg02508.php

http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/PalmOS-HOWTO.html#PC-CONNECT-USB

http://pilot-link.org/README.usb

Carsten Clasohm’s Blog : USB Palm and Fedora Core 3

Writing udev rules by Daniel Drake

Linux Magazine – The Linux Device Model

apt-cache policy

14-Mar-2009 Posted by Sonia Hamilton under , ,
No Comments

It’s years since I’ve dealt with apt-pinning, so all my knowledge on it has paged-out. But I want to use it again because I’ve backgraded to Ubuntu Gutsy to get my Palm Treo syncing, but I want a few new packages from Hardy or Intrepid. (It seems that Palm syncing using the visor module and JPilot still isn’t working, due to an unfixed regression in the kernel. Or maybe I just didn’t look hard enough. Bah – I dislike Hardy and Intrepid anyway).

Anyway, on my (ongoing) apt-pinning travels, I came across a good post on Simple Pinning, and somewhere else read about a neat command I never knew about – apt-cache policy – it shows what apt thinks the current pinning levels are:

Package files:
 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     release a=now
 500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com gutsy-backports/universe Packages
     release v=7.10,o=Ubuntu,a=gutsy-backports,l=Ubuntu,c=universe
     origin au.archive.ubuntu.com
 500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com gutsy-backports/multiverse Packages
     release v=7.10,o=Ubuntu,a=gutsy-backports,l=Ubuntu,c=multiverse
     origin au.archive.ubuntu.com
 500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com gutsy-backports/main Packages
     release v=7.10,o=Ubuntu,a=gutsy-backports,l=Ubuntu,c=main
     origin au.archive.ubuntu.com
 500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com gutsy-backports/restricted Packages
     release v=7.10,o=Ubuntu,a=gutsy-backports,l=Ubuntu,c=restricted
     origin au.archive.ubuntu.com
 500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com gutsy-updates/universe Packages
     release v=7.10,o=Ubuntu,a=gutsy-updates,l=Ubuntu,c=universe
     origin au.archive.ubuntu.com
 500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com gutsy-updates/restricted Packages
     release v=7.10,o=Ubuntu,a=gutsy-updates,l=Ubuntu,c=restricted
     origin au.archive.ubuntu.com
 500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com gutsy-updates/main Packages
     release v=7.10,o=Ubuntu,a=gutsy-updates,l=Ubuntu,c=main
     origin au.archive.ubuntu.com
 500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com gutsy/universe Packages
     release v=7.10,o=Ubuntu,a=gutsy,l=Ubuntu,c=universe
     origin au.archive.ubuntu.com
 500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com gutsy/restricted Packages
     release v=7.10,o=Ubuntu,a=gutsy,l=Ubuntu,c=restricted
     origin au.archive.ubuntu.com
 500 http://au.archive.ubuntu.com gutsy/main Packages
     release v=7.10,o=Ubuntu,a=gutsy,l=Ubuntu,c=main
     origin au.archive.ubuntu.com
Pinned packages:
     vinagre -> (not found)

Nice! Now, armed with this command I’ll start tinkering with /etc/apt/preferences to get Hardy and Intrepid in with proper preferences. TODO: RTFM man apt_preferences :-)

JPilot – Change First Day of Week on Ubuntu

10-Jan-2009 Posted by Sonia Hamilton under
1 Comment

I still use JPilot for syncing with my Palm Treo – an old app but I like it, especially because of JPilot-Keyring.

But there’s no way of changing the first day of the week in JPilot, and consequently the first day of the week appears as Sunday rather than Monday – yikes, Christianity! The solution is to change the first day of the week in Gnome, and JPilot then picks it up.