Look what I found:
“We will be hosting an Ubuntu Toronto User Group Meeting on… 25 July, 2007 6:30 PM… held at the linuxcaffe…”
I have had some real difficulty trying to get my Palm Pilot to work in GNU/Linux (Ubuntu, Dapper and Feisty, to be more precise), and I was preparing a post to outline the solution I had pieced together, only to find a much simpler and much more elegant solution. I’ll share the simple solution first because, hopefully, if you’re trying to set up a Palm device in GNU/Linux, you won’t have to read any further than that. But I’ll also include my lengthy solution, in case you aren’t lucky enough to benefit from the simple way out.
The Simple Solution
I’ve been syncing with jpilot so far, as I haven’t had as much luck with gnome-pilot (it hangs and crashes when trying to sync tasks from my T5 – believe it has to do with the ‘/usr/share/gnome-pilot/devices.xml’ file). Also, I find that Evolution doesn’t really mesh as well with the palm (in terms of categories and that sort of thing).
sudo apt-get install jpilot
Open the application, and go File->Preferences, and then to the “Settings” tab. Set the Serial Port option to “usb:” (without the quotes).
Thanks to MoebusNet for his post on the Ubuntu Forums.
That’s it. This worked for my Palm Tungsten T5 and a Palm Treo 650. It works better than the udev rules because the /dev/pilot default involved some weird timing issues, regarding when you press the sync button in jpilot and on your device. With this setting, just hit the sync button and jpilot, and follow it with the sync button on your device, and that should do the trick!
However, the one remaining and fairly substantial problem I’m having is that jpilot is truncating my notes! I had this problem on the Palm Desktop in windows when I switched from a Visor to a T5, but I was just able to update my version of Palm Desktop. Does anyone know how to handle this in JPilot? I’ve tried the memo32 conduit with no luck as I’m no running pedit32… any help would be appreciated!
Long, Painful, Old Solution
My main reference was a post in the Ubuntu Forums from October 2005, which is why I’m putting myself through the psychological trauma of recounting my experience, since the solution seems to have been slightly different in Feisty than it was in Breezy (and actually not too bad in the end).
1. Get the scoop on your device
I found the command line route very difficult here. I had no success with the suggested command ‘udevinfo -p /dev/ttyUSB0 -a’ (or with ttyUSB1) either… I actually had to change the path to something long and ridiculous to get the device info from the command line. So, I highly recommend using Ubuntu’s device manager.
System -> Administration -> Device Manager – Press the hotsync button, and your device should appear in the list.
2. Creating udev rules (the ‘/dev/pilot’ part)
This was the final magic combination that I will never, ever edit again. Ever. Lest I ruin the magic.
/etc/udev/rules.d/10-custom.rules
# Palm Tungsten T5
BUS=="usb", SYSFS{serial}=="<my-serial-number>", KERNEL=="ttyUSB*", SYSFS{product}=="palmOne Handheld*", NAME="pilot", MODE="0666"
3. Loading the visor module
Run this command to see if the visor module is already running in the kernel:
lsmod | grep visor
Here’s the output on my machine when I run that command with the visor module loaded:
visor 20364 2
usbserial 32488 5 visor
usbcore 134280 8 visor,usbserial,usbhid,usb_storage,libusual,ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd
If you don’t see any output, then the module isn’t loaded. You’ll want to load it by running this command:
sudo modprobe visor
Or you may actually have to at a new line with the text “visor” (without the quotes) to the file ‘/etc/modules’ in order to get this module to load on boot.
sudo gedit /etc/modules
Now you should be able to sync, though this method doesn’t seem to work reliable (it might have to do with the fact that I haven’t added visor to /etc/modules myself).
Happy Palm Piloting in Linux! (hopefully)
My brother just got a brand new laptop – an HP Compaq 6710b. The chipset is brand new, and unfortunately, even newer than Feisty. Feisty was released in April, and the chipset first hit the market in May I believe. The result? No Xserver. We tried the unstable Gutsy live CD with the same results too.
But fear not, there is a solution! We spent hours scouring forums and such, and it turned out to be a lot simpler than we had originally feared. One user spent four days trying to solve the issue, and eventually compiled his own custom kernel.. but there’s a much simpler solution!
1. Install Ubuntu 7.04 using the alternate CD (text mode)
Download the Ubuntu 7.04 Alternate Install CD image here and burn the image to disk.
NOTE: Make sure you check the box for the alternate CD! You’ll need it for the text-based installer. Notice the box underneath the download button: “Check here if you need the alternate desktop CD. This CD does not include the Live CD, instead it uses a text-based installer.”
Then, (re)boot your machine with the alternate CD in the drive. (NOTE: Make sure the boot priority is set so that it boots from the optical disk before the hard drive.) Follow the instructions for the text based install, and then you’ll be prompted to remove the disk and restart once it’s finished.
This is where the xserver error appears. Queue tears.
2. Upgrade to the latest kernel
Now you’ve got Ubuntu 7.04 installed, but all you get is the command line. The first step is to upgrade to the latest kernel, which is in the Feisty repos and supports the Mobile™ Intel® 965GM Express Chipset. Here’s how to upgrade:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-image-2.6.20-16-generic
NOTE: For some reason, apt-get was looking for the packages in the cdrom drive sometimes… I realized that it was included at the top of /etc/apt/sources.list, so I just commented it out.. not sure if you’ll encounter this or not though.
Restart your machine:
sudo shutdown -r 0
When you boot up again (you should still get the Xserver error), you can double-check to make sure you’re running the latest kernel with this command:
uname -r
It should print “2.6.20-16-generic”.
3. Reconfigure xserver-xorg
In order to get your xserver working, you’ll need to reconfigure. I ended up playing around with many different configurations without much luck, but it was selecting the ‘i810′ driver which ultimately led to a success for me.
It would be a good idea to backup your xorg.conf file first, just in case you want to go back to the default configuration (though the wizard should create a backup for you – ‘/etc/X11/xorg.conf.200707012006′ for example):
sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.backup
To start the text-based wizard, run this command:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
This will guide you through pages and pages of options and update your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file for you. I accepted all of the existing options (just kept pressing enter for the most part), except for the first, which I changed from ‘vesa’ to ‘i810′.
Edit: i810 is deprecated, so it’s best to go with the replacement package ‘intel’ than the unsupported ‘i810′. First, you need to install the intel driver:
sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg-video-intel
Then, when you reconfigure xserver-org, select ‘intel’ instead of ‘i810′, as I’d originally described above.
To restart your xserver, I believe you can just restart your xserver with “sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart”, however, to be safe, I just rebooted the machine as it didn’t take much longer anyways (‘sudo shutdown -r 0′).
Hopefully that works! There are still several other issues though apparently with this laptop right now, which should hopefully be solved over the next few months as drivers for this chipset become more widely available and are included in popular distributions like Ubuntu.
Other issues:
Hopefully these issues will be resolved later this year as the drivers make there way into various distributions. For now, we’ve got a workable setup on this laptop and a bit of patience and a desire to learn, so we’re sticking with it. I wouldn’t recommend a machine like this for a non-technical user, but it’s workable for someone willing to get their hands a bit dirty.
A big thanks goes out to marcusherou for giving us some guidance in configuring xserver-xorg!
Banding Fix
(( Jared says:
I followed the instructions href=”http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=494943″>here telling me where to put the file that dealt with the gamma, and I installed the package. Then I backed up my xorg.conf, and replaced it with his xorg.conf there. His xorg.conf messed up my keyboard layout and mouse speed. Before editing with his xorg.conf I tried using my old one with the new drivers, and I also tried copying and pasted the keyboard section and synaptics touch pad section from my own xorg.conf. All of those attempts ended up in X crashing.
Here are the sections from xorg.conf that I edited, if I didn’t put a “<---" and some words beside it, I didn't touch it.
Keyboard Section in xorg.conf:
Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Keyboard0″
Driver “kbd”
Option “CoreKeyboard”
Option “XkbRules” “xorg”
Option “XkbModel” “pc105″
Option “XkbLayout” “us” <--- I edited this line, it used to say "it" instead of "us"
Option "XkbOptions" "lv3:ralt_switch"
EndSection
Mouse Section in xorg.conf:
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Touchpad0"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "SHMConfig" "on"
# Option "HorizScrollDelta" "5"
# Option "VertScrollDelta" "5"
# Option "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "true" <--- This one and the one underneath were already commented out, the rest I commented out myself
# Option "VertTwoFingerScroll" "true"
# Option "LockedDrags" "false"
# Option "EdgeMotionUseAlways" "true"
# Option "EdgeMotionMinSpeed" "1"
# Option "EdgeMotionMaxSpeed" "5"
# Option "EmulateMidButtonTime" "100"
Option "MinSpeed" "0.1" <--- This I guess is the minimum speed of the mouse, it was set to 0.5 before
Option "MaxSpeed" "0.3" <--- This would be the max speed, it was set to 1.0 before
Option "AccelFactor" "0.1"
EndSection
After that, it worked.
))
My family has a Brother MFC420CN which is run off the network and accessible to everyone in the house. Though it’s not my default printer, it’s convenient to have a backup in things go wrong or ink runs out with another printer, so I was eager to get it installed on my Linux machine. I was able to piece it together instructions from a few different tutorials on the brother website to get in working.
First of all, step 1 on this page provides you with links to both the LPR driver and cupwrapper driver – both of which you’ll need – and steps 2-4 explain how to install them on your system.
NOTE: To install those packages, you need csh, which is not included with Debian/Ubuntu by default. If you don’t have csh installed, this command should do the trick on a Debian based system: “sudo apt-get install csh”
If you’re installing the printer on a USB port, then the first link should be sufficient, but our MFC420CN is hooked up to the network directly, so I had to go digging further for these instructions. You should be able to skip the first step if you successfully installed the driver using the packages on the previous page, but the valuable information here is regarding locate your printer on the network. The example given is “lpd://10.2.65.104/binary_p1″. Replace the IP address with the IP of your printer. I believe there is detailed documentation on how to discover/change the IP address of your MFC420CN in the guide found on the main support page for the printer. I just checked my router’s logs to find the printer’s local IP.
That should be all you need to know to get it working. You can use the CUPS web-based interface, or the Ubuntu Printer Management GUI. Either way, the secret handshake that’s most important is the “lpd://ip.address/binary_p1″. Secret handshake + drivers = a printing MFC420CN. Now.. I just wish the stupid thing didn’t lock up every time one of the cartridges ran out of ink…
I have yet to give the scanner a try, but I’ll save that for another day.
In trying to figure out where to begin recounting my last two months of experience with Linux, you would think that the installation process would be a logical starting point. Except since it was so easy, I haven’t been able to think about much to say. But I figured there were a couple things that may be worth mentioning, so here goes.
I choose to install Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake) on my hp compaq nx6110 laptop (as well as on a couple of desktops). I was running Windows XP and wanted to keep it, opting for a dual-boot setup. I managed to free up 10 GB or so on my 40 GB machine. I only gave Ubuntu 8 GB to start, as the initial installation was pretty experimental for me. I was a bit worried that it might be a pain to try and adjust the partitions later if I later decided to make Ubuntu my main OS, but with the help of a gparted live cd, it, like the initial Ubuntu installation, was surprisingly simple.
I don’t think there’s really much to say about the actual installation of Ubuntu. It’s really easy from the Live DVD, and very straightforward. You can take the operating system for a test drive by booting your computer from the DVD without risking any harm to your system. Most of the time everything (i.e. touchpad mouse, internal wireless, etc.) should work fine. ((In fact, I’ve gotten things like my webcam (which I could NOT get working in XP) working with Ubuntu in a matter of seconds.)) You’ll want to check your hardware though. For example, some printers install in 30 seconds while others I’ve fought with for hours without any luck. When you’re confident that your hardware is compatible with Ubuntu, the installation wizard really handles everything for you. In about half an hour or so, you’re new OS will be up and running.
The installation wizard gives you a few options regarding the dual-boot configuration. You can give Ubuntu your entire disk, which will wipe out any previous operating systems. You can have it auto-detect your other operating systems, which will allow you to select the operating system you want to use every time you boot up. You also have the option to manual edit the partition tables – don’t do this unless you know what you’re doing! The option to auto-detect other operating systems works really well, and there are measures in place to protect your data from being overwritten. (Always backup though!!)
It helps to do some research on which distribution is right for you. On an older machine I configured with limited memory, I opted for Xubuntu over Ubuntu to increase the performance. Also, you might choose Kubuntu over Ubuntu (or vice versa) for reasons of personal preference. But it’s rather easy to change your desktop environment after installation also, so if you’re unsure at first, it’s probably easiest to go with whatever is on the DVD in front of you. Here is a good summary about how you can switch your desktop environment later on.
Once installed, as a linux n00b, the first challenge I faced was learning how to install programs. It’s really just as simple as going to Applications -> Add/Remove. Basically, this lists all the programs available to download and it’s just a matter of selecting which applications you want! (For additional programs, you can add extra repositories) Once you realize that it’s not like Windows, but rather much easier, you won’t have any problems getting started. If you want to find out more about the Ubuntu software packaging system, it uses apt-get.
If you’ve got a good reference handy, it makes the initial setup of your Ubuntu machine that much easier. Here’s a great starter guide: Unofficial Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) Starter Guide
Anyways, the best way to get started is just to give it a try. It’s good to do some reading to make sure you’re picking the best distribution for your needs/setup ahead of time, and to have some supplementary resources handy (especially if you’re new to Linux). But honestly, just try it. Backup your machine (or test it out on an old computer first), and give it a shot.
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