Palm synchronization on OpenBSD
I use an Palm Zire 72 which is a very nice device. I still it has the most usable base applications available on any PDA.
This is how I configured Palm sync on my OpenBSD 4.3 workstation.
The first task is to identify which USB port and driver to use. According to my dmesg output it seems to be an uvisor0 driver attached via ucom0. Note that this message are entered when trying an Hotsync via USB attached Palm.
After reading manual pages for uvisor and ucom I finally realize that it is /dev/ttyU0 device that should be used. This was not obvious for me and that took some time (and trial and error) to figure out.
...
uvisor0 at uhub2 port 2 "PalmOne, Inc. Palm Handheld" rev 1.00/1.00 addr 3
ucom0 at uvisor0 portno 0, sync
ucom0 detached
uvisor0 detached
I tried two tools to sync with Palm, pilot-link and jpilot, which both are available through packages;
pkg_add pilot-link-0.12.3
pkg_add jpilot-0.99.9p6
To make a backup I first issued the following command (pilot-xfer is part of pilot-link). Note that Hotsync must first be issued from the device before issuing pilot-xfer in order for it to locate the device (device is only attached during Hotsync operation).
# mkdir ~/pilot
# mkdir ~/pilot/backup
# pilot-xfer --port /dev/ttyU0 --backup ~/pilot/backup
To enable access to /dev/ttyU0 for all users it is required to change the permissions to allow that. It is also custom to add a symbolic link /dev/pilot which is linked to the used port.
# ln -sf /dev/ttyU0 /dev/pilot
# chmod o+r+w /dev/ttyU0
# chmod o+r+w /dev/pilot
As Palm desktop I used jpilot software (I run this through a gnome desktop environment). To sync just enter /dev/pilot in Preferences-Settings-Serial Port, press sync button on jpilot UI and then press the Hotsync button on the Palm device.
Everything seems to work smoothly ...