[jp] Step by step diagnostics for no Palm sync (was Re: newly acquired 2nd-hand clie doesn't sync)

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  • David A. Desrosiers desrod at gnu-designs.com
    Wed May 23 10:31:07 EDT 2007

     

    On Wed, 2007-05-23 at 08:29 -0400, JoeHill wrote:
    > This is the same situation I'm in right now. About the only thing I
    > can think of is that I did update my kernel a couple of months ago,
    > which is around the same time that I stopped seeing the connection
    > established between my Visor and my computer. 
    
    Let's start from scratch here... this isn't a complicated process, and
    there are two reasons which cover 99.9% of the reasons why Palm devices
    don't sync on Linux: 
    
    	1. Hardware issues (bad cables, flaky usb ports, wedged Palm)
    	2. Misconfiguration by default or by repeated tinkering
    
    So we can take some steps to try to diagnose/eliminate those two issues,
    but first... a few preliminary questions (and this applies to anyone who
    has connection issues) 
    
            1. What distribution and kernel version do you have? You can
            obtain
               these by the following: 
            
            	cat /etc/lsb-release
            	uname -a
            
            2. What version of udev are you running? You can obtain these by
            the
               following: 
            
            	COLUMNS=100 dpkg -l | grep udev # For Debian/Ubuntu
            	rpm -qa | grep udev # For SUSE, Red Hat, Fedora, etc.
            
            3. Do you have a proper, accurate udev rule to detect the Palm
               device for "normal" visor module syncronization? Check that
            by
               the following: 
            
            	egrep -i '(Palm|Handspring)' /etc/udev/rules.d/*
            
            This should report something like the following: 
            
            	BUS=="usb", SYSFS{product}=="Palm Handheld*|Handspring *",
            	KERNEL=="ttyUSB*", NAME="ttyUSB%n", SYMLINK="pilot",
            	GROUP="usb", MODE="0666"
            
            If it doesn't, edit the rule that appears to make it look like
            this one. If it doesn't exist at all, add a new file
            in /etc/udev/rules.d called 'custom.rules' and put this line in
            it (all on one line), and restart udev. 
            
            4. Does your visor module insert and remove properly, without
               crashing or errors? tail(1) your system logs in one open
            terminal
               (tail -f /var/log/messages) and in another, issue the
            following
               command: 
            
            	sudo modprobe visor
            
            You should see the logs increment with something useful,
            indicating that the visor driver is loaded and ready. Now remove
            it.. 
            
            	sudo rmmod visor
            
            You should now see a clean shutdown message in those logs. If
            you don't, stop here and report your results. If you do,
            continue on...
            
            5. Cradle your Palm device and hit HotSync, and do *NOTHING
            ELSE*.
               Just let the Palm attempt to connect and time out. If you
            hear a
               tweedle-dee sound and see the Palm say "Identifying user" on
            the
               Palm LCD, then another process is already listening on your
            Linux
               machine, and is attempting to connect. The two most-likely
               candidates are KPilot (kpilotDaemon) and gnome-pilot
            (gpilotd). 
            
            If you hear this tweedle-dee sound and see the message on the
            Palm LCD screen, you need to find the process and kill it before
            you can sync with J-Pilot. The good news is.. if you hear this
            tweedle-dee sound from your Palm and it says "Identifying
            user..." on the Palm screen, you're nearly done, because your
            Palm CAN communicate with your Linux machine. 
            
            6. When your Palm tries to connect to your Linux machine after
            Step
               5 above, you should see the logs from step 4 increment and
            show
               an attempted connection. The visor module should have
            auto-loaded
               to assist in this connection Verify that with: 
            
            	/sbin/lsmod | grep visor
            
            If you see it loaded, your udev rule from Step 3 worked. If
            visor is not loaded, then we go back to Step 3 and find out
            why. 
            
            7. If you've reached this step, that means everything has worked
            so
               far.. so let's try making a connection with the userland
            tools.
               Hit HotSync on your Palm again, watch those logs to see that
            they
               show a connection, and then point pilot-xfer (from
            pilot-link) to
               the pseudo-port that we've created in the udev rule in Step
            3.
               This will be called /dev/pilot. 
            
            You'll want to wait anywhere from 3-10 seconds between hitting
            HotSync and launching pilot-xfer. The delay here is dependent on
            how complex your udev rules are to parse, the speed at which
            visor is loaded and available, the CPU speed of your Linux
            machine and the CPU speed of your Palm device. It varies quite a
            bit among devices. 
            
            	pilot-xfer -p /dev/pilot -l 
            
            This should connect and show a list of available databases on
            your Palm device. If it did, then you're done. Just
            put /dev/pilot in J-Pilot's preferences for the port designation
            and try it with J-Pilot. 
    
    If not, report what happened here, where it fails, and we can diagnose
    what steps to take next to try to figure it out. 
    
    I've written two lengthy, detailed HOWTO documents that describe this as
    well as the slightly-faster libusb connection method. Give them a read: 
    
    http://www.pilot-link.org/README.usb
    http://www.pilot-link.org/README.libusb
    
    
    -- 
    David A. Desrosiers - desrod at gnu-designs.com 
    "There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, 
    ballot, jury and ammo. Use in that order. Starting now."
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