Coldsync is an alternative to the pilot-link suite for transferring data to
and from your PalmOS device. Like pilot-link, it can synchronise,
backup and restore Palm databases.
There are fewer applications available which use coldsync as their backend. That
may change, but it seems to reflect a difference in philosophy between coldsync
and pilot-link. Applications that sync using pilot-link tend to build
in the functionality for synchronisation. It is therefore the author
of the application that decides to include pilot-link support.
Coldsync takes a different approach. Conduits can be written to
use coldsync with almost any application. The synchronisation process
can be entirely transparent to the application. If the application author
is not interested in adding PDA support, it does not matter. As long as
the data format of the application is available, someone else can write
the conduit.
Some Linux distributions are carrying coldsync, but it is
not yet as widely available as pilot-link. It is also a younger
application, so you are more likely to need to compile from source.
You can find the latest release of coldsync at www.ooblick.com/software/coldsync.
As well as the current version, you will find a link to the latest
CVS snapshot.
Once you have the downloaded the source,
compile it as follows:
tar -xvzf
colsync-2.2.5.tar.gz
cd coldsync-2.2.5
./configure
make
make install |
You can run coldsync directly from the
src directory. For more information,
see the README file that comes with coldsync.
By default, coldsync reads configuration parameters from a file called
.coldsyncrc in your home directory. The
-f flag overrides the default if
you need to use an alternative configuration file. In addition, some
of the parameters in the configuration file can be set or overridden
on the command line.
The following is an example of
a .coldsyncrc file:
listen serial {
device: "/dev/palm";
protocol: default;
transient;
}
pda "My Palm" {
snum: "L0PK17C13832-M";
username: "Sean";
userid: 1234;
directory:
"/home/sean/m505";
default;
} |
This example tells coldsync to look for a serial port connection on
/dev/palm. The transient keyword
tells coldsync that the device may not exist until the user presses
the Hotsync button. The pda section tells coldsync the serial number
of the device, the username and id of the user and the directory
to which the device will be backed up.
The coldsync configuration file is well documented in the man page
(man coldsync), but it is worth
repeating some points:
Do not use a userid of 0 in your PDA section. This can lead to a loss of data
if you need to perform a hard reset of your Palm.
If you have a Palm m505 with a USB cradle under Linux, you
should not use listen usb. Instead
use listen serial with
protocol: simple;
P5-Palm is a set of Perl modules for communicating with a Palm device via
coldsync, and can be downloaded from the coldsync site. The purpose of the
p5-Palm modules is to simplify and speed up the creation of conduits.
You should install p5-Palm if you want to use any of the coldsync conduits.
You do not need p5-Palm if you will only be using coldsync for simple backups.
To install the modules:
tar -zxvf p5-Palm-1.2.4.tar.gz
cd p5-Palm-1.2.4
perl Makefile.PL
make
make install |
A number
of conduits are available for coldsync. These conduits use
coldsync to synchronise other applications with your PDA. The
conduits generally require the p5-Palm Perl modules described
above.
The list of conduits is available at http://www.ooblick.com/software/coldsync/conduits/.
The conduits require an entry in your .coldsyncrc configuration file. To find
out what should be entered, run /path/conduit -config, where path is the
location of the conduit.
