Palm Pilots

As a local device, Palm Pilots can a bit of a challenge in a terminal server, but the good news is Palm devices have a built in feature called LanSync for synchronization over a network.

Overview of operation

The terminal runs pi-nredir which is included in Pilot Link. Pi-nredir "will bind your locally connected device to a network port,and redirect them through the network device to a listening server as specified in the LANSync preferences panel on your Palm." The LTSP Pilot Link (below) contains pi-nredir and a script rc.pilot to configure pi-nredir through lts.conf.

On the terminal server, you run any pilot application such as KPilot, Gnome Pilot, JPilot, pilot-link, etc. while instructing it to use the network (instead of USB, for example).

When the Palm device is plugged in to the terminal and the user presses the HotSync^? button on the Palm device, the Palm connects to the application listening on the the terminal server. (The Palm device must be configured with the IP address of the terminal server.)

LTSP Pilot Link

This is a package to enable redirection of a palm pilot connected to the terminal to a netsync to the server (specified in the Palm Pilot's configuration for netsync). This does not currently address the larger problem of building a palm sync server that can handle multiple simultaneous netsync requests and sync to the appropriate user data. So far, if you start up JPilot or pilot-link or equivalent on the server and set it to respond to a netsync, then hit the hotsync button on the cradle, it will successfully sync. For enterprise production use, a true sync server needs to be created. I am currently looking into the "coldsync" project for this functionality.

https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=110959&package_id=134524&release_id=311507

-- GideonRomm - 09 Mar 2005

Make sure to read the release notes.

Modifications for LTSP 4.2

The LTSP Pilot package was made for LTSP 4.1. If you are running 4.2, then find rc.pilot and comment out the lines with modprobe. Then, remove the section "Make nodes if necessary." Also, since /dev is different in LTSP 4.2 (because of the Linux 2.4 to 2.6 upgrade), you probably should change the default device to /dev/pilot which works nicely with USB.

Palm Device configuration

See Setting up the Palm. Note that the IP and host name in the Palm refer to the server and not the terminal.

Application configuration

gnome-pilot

gnome-pilot is integrated into Evolution. In Evolution, choose Edit->Synchronization Options to setup the sync. Then, add the Pilot Applet to your panel. Finally, sync'ing is as easy as pressing the HotSync button on the device.

Gnome-pilot versions < 2.0.14 don't work because of a bug, but version 2.0.14 does sync over the network.

• bug: gpilotd is left running when applet is removed

KPilot

kpilot 4.6.0 doesn't seem to work over the network.

• http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=133183
• http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=124197
• http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=111826

J-Pilot

J-Pilot 0.99.8 does work over the network. If it doesn't seem to do anything, look on the console for an error message. (In my case, gpilotd had the port locked, so I had to close gpilotd.)

pilot-link

Either set the environment variable PILOTPORT to net:any or add to the command line -p net:any. If you get the error message "Unable to bind to port: net:any", then verify that no other process (such as the gnome-pilot applet or kpilot) is using that port.

Multiple Palm users per terminal server

I (AndrewZ^?) am not an expert on Palm network sync, but it seems there is a design issue that makes it difficult to support multiple users per terminal server. When a program on the terminal server is waiting for a network hotsync, it binds a TCP (or UDP?) port, so whichever user opens the port first wins.

The best solution I imagine is to use multiple terminal servers or have each user close the port when he is not syncing.