Gentoo Archives: gentoo-doc-cvs

From: Sven Vermeulen <swift@××××××××××××.org>
To: gentoo-doc-cvs@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-doc-cvs] cvs commit: pda-guide.xml
Date: Sat, 06 Oct 2007 15:59:30
Message-Id: E1IeBuc-0008Lx-Cx@stork.gentoo.org
1 swift 07/10/06 15:49:54
2
3 Added: pda-guide.xml
4 Log:
5 pda guide draft
6
7 Revision Changes Path
8 1.1 xml/htdocs/doc/en/draft/pda-guide.xml
9
10 file : http://sources.gentoo.org/viewcvs.py/gentoo/xml/htdocs/doc/en/draft/pda-guide.xml?rev=1.1&view=markup
11 plain: http://sources.gentoo.org/viewcvs.py/gentoo/xml/htdocs/doc/en/draft/pda-guide.xml?rev=1.1&content-type=text/plain
12
13 Index: pda-guide.xml
14 ===================================================================
15 <?xml version='1.0' encoding="UTF-8"?>
16 <!DOCTYPE guide SYSTEM "/dtd/guide.dtd">
17 <!-- $Header: /var/cvsroot/gentoo/xml/htdocs/doc/en/draft/pda-guide.xml,v 1.1 2007/10/06 15:49:54 swift Exp $ -->
18
19 <guide link="/doc/en/draft/pda-guide.xml" lang="en">
20 <title>Gentoo PDA Guide</title>
21
22 <author title="Author">
23 <mail link="swift@g.o">Sven Vermeulen</mail>
24 </author>
25 <author title="Author">
26 <mail link="chriswhite@g.o">Chris White</mail>
27 </author>
28
29 <abstract>
30 Nowadays, personal digital assistants, or PDAs, are quite popular. Not only do
31 they provide more features than before, they are also easy to handle, even by
32 people who aren't that computer literate. But how can you synchronise these PDAs
33 with your Gentoo Linux installation if they are almost all running Windows
34 Mobile?
35 </abstract>
36
37 <!-- The content of this document is licensed under the CC-BY-SA license -->
38 <!-- See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0 -->
39 <license/>
40
41 <version>1.0</version>
42 <date>2007-09-27</date>
43
44 <chapter>
45 <title>Setting up PDA Support</title>
46 <section>
47 <title>Introduction</title>
48 <body>
49
50 <p>
51 PDAs are everywhere. They are an evolution of the paper journals and address
52 books and have become very feature-rich: addresses and telephone numbers,
53 pictures and movies, small spreadsheets or documents, calender entries, ...
54 anything is possible with PDAs. And thanks to wireless technology, PDAs can
55 manipulate or receive data from various devices (like GPS devices or other PDAs)
56 or join the world-wide Internet.
57 </p>
58
59 <p>
60 However, most PDAs run a propriatary operating system and might not be easy to
61 synchronise with your computer if you are not running software of the same
62 vendor. Luckily, the free software community has made serious efforts in reverse
63 engineering access to the PDAs and some companies have even opened their
64 specification to connect with the PDA. This guide will cover accessing and
65 synchronizing PDAs with your system.
66 </p>
67
68 </body>
69 </section>
70 <section>
71 <title>Kernel Setup</title>
72 <body>
73
74 <p>
75 The first thing we need to do is get the kernel to recognize our device. Open up
76 the kernel configuration (for instance, through <c>make menuconfig</c>) and add
77 support for your PDA. If your device uses USB to connect to a computer you will
78 most likely find support for it under <e>Device Drivers -&gt; USB support -&gt;
79 USB Serial Converter support</e>. For instance, iPAQ users (and many others) can
80 use the <e>USB PocketPC PDA Driver</e>.
81 </p>
82
83 <pre caption="Kernel Driver Setup">
84 &lt;M&gt; USB Serial Converter support
85 [ ] USB Serial Console device support (EXPERIMENTAL)
86 [ ] USB Generic Serial Driver
87 &lt; &gt; USB Belkin and Peracom Single Port Serial Driver
88 &lt; &gt; USB ConnectTech WhiteHEAT Serial Driver
89 &lt; &gt; USB Digi International AccelePort USB Serial Driver
90 &lt; &gt; USB Cypress M8 USB Serial Driver
91 &lt; &gt; USB Empeg empeg-car Mark I/II Driver
92 &lt; &gt; USB FTDI Single Port Serial Driver (EXPERIMENTAL)
93 &lt; &gt; USB Handspring Visor / Palm m50x / Sony Clie Driver
94 &lt;M&gt; USB PocketPC PDA Driver
95 </pre>
96
97 <p>
98 You might wonder why it is called a <e>Serial Converter</e>. This is because you
99 are going to use USB (technology) to talk with your device, even though the
100 device itself is accessed using a serial protocol.
101 </p>
102
103 <p>
104 You will also need asynchronous PPP support:
105 </p>
106
107 <pre caption="Kernel Driver Setup for Async PPP">
108 Device Drivers ---&gt;
109 Network device support ---&gt;
110 &lt;M&gt; PPP (point-to-point protocol) support
111 &lt;M&gt; PPP support for async serial ports
112 </pre>
113
114 <p>
115 Rebuild the kernel and its modules. If you only had to modify a module, you can
116 install the modules and continue. Otherwise, set up the new kernel in your boot
117 loader and reboot.
118 </p>
119
120 </body>
121 </section>
122 <section>
123 <title>Detecting Your PDA</title>
124 <body>
125
126 <p>
127 Ok, now that we have the kernel module setup, let's go ahead and get some
128 information. Plug in your device and take a look at your modules list if
129 you have build support for the device as a kernel module:
130 </p>
131
132 <pre caption="Checking if your PDA is detected">
133 # <i>lsmod</i>
134 Module Size Used by
135 ipaq 30736 0
136 usbserial 25120 1 ipaq
137 <comment>(...)</comment>
138
139 # <i>dmesg | grep Pocket</i>
140 drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for PocketPC PDA
141 drivers/usb/serial/ipaq.c: USB PocketPC PDA driver v0.5
142 ipaq 3-2:1.0: PocketPC PDA converter detected
143 usb 3-2: PocketPC PDA converter now attached to ttyUSB0
144
145 # <i>ls -la /dev/ttyUSB0</i>
146 crw-rw---- 1 root uucp 188, 0 Sep 27 19:21 /dev/ttyUSB0
147 </pre>
148
149 <p>
150 As we can see, the device has been detected and is now accessible through
151 <path>/dev/ttyUSB0</path>.
152 </p>
153
154 </body>
155 </section>
156 </chapter>
157
158 <chapter>
159 <title>Setting Up SynCE</title>
160 <section>
161 <title>Introduction</title>
162 <body>
163
164 <p>
165 <uri link="http://www.synce.org">SynCE</uri> is the tool you can use to connect
166 to and work with Windows Mobile and Windows CE powered devices. The tool
167 connects, through the device set up earlier, to the device and allows
168 applications to synchronise appointments, addresses and more.
169 </p>
170
171 <p>
172 A list of devices supported through SynCE can be found on the
173 <uri link="http://www.synce.org">SynCE website</uri>.
174 </p>
175
176 <p>
177 SynCE is not available through a stable ebuild though, so before installing it,
178 you will first need to mark them in <path>/etc/portage/package.keywords</path>.
179 </p>
180
181 <pre caption="List of packages to list in package.keywords">
182 app-pda/synce
183 app-pda/synce-software-manager
184 app-pda/synce-librapi2
185 app-pda/synce-libsynce
186 app-pda/synce-multisync_plugin
187 app-pda/synce-rra
188 dev-libs/libmimedir
189 app-pda/synce-dccm
190 app-pda/synce-trayicon
191 app-pda/orange
192 app-pda/dynamite
193 app-pda/synce-kde
194 app-pda/synce-gnomevfs
195 app-pda/synce-serial
196 </pre>
197
198 <p>
199 Then, install the <c>app-pda/synce</c> package to obtain the necessary tools.
200 </p>
201
202 </body>
203 </section>
204 <section>
205 <title>Configuring the PDA</title>
206 <body>
207
208 <p>
209 The next task is to configure the serial device we found earlier
210 (<path>/dev/ttyUSB0</path> in our example) to be used with SynCE:
211 </p>
212
213 <pre caption="Configuring the serial device for SynCE">
214 ~# <i>synce-serial-config ttyUSB0</i>
215
216 You can now run synce-serial-start to start a serial connection.
217 </pre>
218
219 <p>
220 Now, log on as the user who will be using the PDA and run the <c>dccm</c>
221 command. This tool is the connection manager for SynCE through which programs
222 connect to the device.
223 </p>
224
225 <pre caption="Launching the connection manager">
226 ~$ <i>dccm</i>
227 </pre>
228
229 <p>
230 As root again, run <c>synce-serial-start</c> which will connect to the device.
231 With some PDAs, you will notice this on the PDA itself through a synchronisation
232 symbol or any other event.
233 </p>
234
235 <pre caption="Running synce-serial-start">
236 ~# <i>synce-serial-start</i>
237 </pre>
238
239 <p>
240 TOD In some cases, the first attempts fail but this isn't shown immediately. You
241 can rerun the command a few times until the command replies that a serial
242 connection is already started. To verify that the connection is done, check if a
243 ppp interface (like ppp0) is created and has an IP address attached to it.
244 </p>
245
246 </body>
247 </section>
248 </chapter>
249
250 <chapter>
251 <title>Working With Your PDA</title>
252 <section>
253 <title>File Navigation and Manipulation</title>
254 <body>
255
256 <p>
257 The SynCE project provides a number of programs to communicate with the PDA and
258 exchange files. The tools have similar namings as on a regular Unix system but
259 with a <c>p</c> prepended to it: <c>pcp</c>, <c>pls</c>, <c>pmv</c>, <c>prm</c>,
260 <c>pmkdir</c>, <c>prmdir</c>. Other tools are specific for PDAs, like
261 <c>prun</c> to launch a program, <c>synce-install-cab</c> to install a CAB file
262 or <c>pstatus</c> to display information about the device.
263 </p>
264
265 </body>
266 </section>
267 </chapter>
268
269 </guide>
270
271
272
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