[CentOS] Re: And now onto the palm pilot with Kpilot

[Etienne Savard]

Shawn M. Jones wrote:

> Dave Gutteridge wrote:
>
>> The Kpilot documentation suggest that I look for the palm pilot at 
>> /dev/ttyUSB0. That didn't work, but I noticed in my /dev/ directory 
>> that there was also a ttyUSB1. That didn't work either. But then I 
>> noticed that both were only apparent when I was hot syncing my Palm, 
>> so they must be connected to it.
>>
>> Any ideas, then, as to why Kpilot is not acknowledging them as a Palm 
>> device the way that lsusb does?
>
>
> I've wrestled with this one before.  I believe that udev creates the 
> /dev/ttyUSB0 or ttyUSB1 once the "sync" button is pressed on the 
> cradle.  I had to do something with udev in order to get it to create 
> a /dev/pilot symlink to this device on every boot, but at the moment I 
> don't have access to the machine to tell you what it was.
>
> Also, I suggest trying to start with dlpsh to diagnose any problems.  
> It is a command line utility for accessing your palm device.  I've 
> found that it gives much better feedback than Kpilot or Gpilot.  It is 
> included with the pilot-link package on CentOS 4.
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> --Shawn

Hi Dave,

I own a Palm Tungsten E too and I was able to sync it successfully with 
jpilot (http://www.jpilot.org). The same procedure should work with 
KPilot since it is also a front-end to pilot-link.

Actually, /dev/ttyUSB1 is the sync port... but it can be also 
/dev/ttyUSB3 or /dev/ttyUSB5... Thanks to udev, each time you press the 
hotsync button, there is no waranty that your sym port will always be 
/dev/ttyUSB1. The problem is that KPilot (and jpilot too) will look for  
/dev/pilot simlink. The trick is to add a rule for udev so it can map 
/dev/ttyUSB[13579] to /dev/pilot. So, as root, open a text editor 
(kedit, emacs, etc) and create a new file named 10-visor-rules under 
/etc/udev/rules.d

Put this line inside that file:
BUS="usb", SYSFS {product}="Palm Handheld", KERNEL="ttyUSB[13579]", 
SYMLINK="pilot"

Save it and try to push the hotsync button on you Tungsten E. If you do 
a ls -l on /dev/pilot you should see something the simlink: pilot -> ttyUSB1

Now, try again to sync in KPilot. It worked for me!

Good luck!

Etienne.