The first step to getting your PDA running under Linux is to connect it
to your PC. Until recently, all PalmOS devices connected via a serial
cable. The latest devices use USB, and some can also connect via infrared.
Another development allows the PDA to physically connect to one
machine on the network and synchronise remotely with another machine.
The serial connection is currently the easiest way to connect
your PDA to your PC. Simply connect the cradle to a serial port,
then refer to that port when using coldsync or the pilot-link
suite. The serial connection is slow, but has the advantage of
being tried and tested. It should work with any Palm OS device for
which a serial cable is available. Serial cradles and cables are
available as accessories for the Palm PDAs, including those which
come with USB cradles as standard.
For convenience, you may wish
to create a device called /dev/pilot
as a link to the serial port. The pilot-link suite uses this device
by default, so if the link exists it will save you having to specify
it each time you call one of the programs.
To create the link, log on as root and enter the following command:
ln -s /dev/ttyS0 /dev/pilot |
Replace /dev/ttyS0 with
the serial port to which you have connected the your PDA. The device
name /dev/ttyS0 corresponds to COM1 in
DOS/Windows terminology, /dev/ttyS1 is
COM2, and so on.
You also need to ensure that you have
permission to write to the serial port. On a standalone workstation you
can change the permissions to allow global access to the port. As root,
enter the following command:
Greater security can be achieved using the group permissions. Set
the permissions to read/write for the group and add the required
users to the user list for the group (see man
group). (TODO: More detail).
Recent Linux distributions may use devfs for device naming. In
this case /dev/ttyS0 may not exist, or may
be a symbolic link to /dev/tts/0. This is
a new naming scheme brought in with the 2.4 kernel. Simply replace all
references to /dev/ttyS0 with /dev/tts/0.
If you use symbolic links with devfs, you may find that the links do not persist
correctly after you reboot. The /etc/devfsd.conf
file controls the creation of symbolic links to dynamically created devices.
As always, the operation seems to be set up differently under different
distributions.
Manrake 8.1 creates a link from /dev/usb/tts/1 to /dev/pilot when the hotsync
button is pressed on the cradle.
RedHat 7.2 requires the link to be created manually. The link is then persistent
across boots (thanks to Jim Mueller for this information).
USB access to Palm devices is relatively new. The Handspring
Visor seems to be well supported, and works with the pilot-link
suite. Currently, the Palm m500 series only works with coldsync, although
pilot-link support is in active development. Update:
the current development version of pilot-link, 0.10.x, has support for
USB devices. See the pilot-link section for more about this release.
To use any
USB device under Linux, you need to have USB support in your kernel. You
will also need the relevant modules available. Most (TODO: Check which
distros work out of the box) recent Linux distributions have USB support
enabled by default. To check your system, try the following command as
root:
If you get no output from this command, then the module is available and
you do not need to recompile your kernel. If this does not work, try the
alternative usbserial module:
This is used by some distributions, such as
Redhat 7.0.
If you need to set up USB support in your kernel, the
Handspring
Visor with Linux mini-HOWTO provides instructions. (TODO:
Incorporate into this HOWTO?)
Once USB support is set
up, you should use device /dev/ttyUSB1
to communicate with your PDA. Note that this device name only exists
after you have pressed the hotsync button on the
cradle. You must press the button before running the connection software.
If you have problems synchronising via USB, try an updated kernel. There
may be some timing issues with the USB driver. For example, I found that
stock Mandrake 8.1 did not work on one PC, but worked first time on a faster
PC. Upgrading to a stock 2.4.17 kernel solved the problem and worked fine on
both PCs.
The latest Palm devices have infrared (IrDA) ports. If
you have one of these, and a PC with an infrared port, you can
synchronise over IrDA and do away with the cables altogether.
David A. Desrosiers has written a comprehensive HOWTO on the
subject. (TODO: Include this inline?)
It is possible to physically connect your PDA to one PC,
and synchronise it with another PC elsewhere on the network. This
might be a useful feature if you need to synchronise with a PC to
which you cannot physically connect your PDA.
Once again David A. Desrosiers has written a (less comprehensive) HOWTO on the
subject. (TODO: Include this inline? Not convinced of the value of this
method - anyone care to comment?)
