Jpilot and Treo: backup broke my PDA

[SYNass IT Ubuntu / Linux]

Hi Tommy 
Thanks a lot for your extensive and very interesting feedback !

English isn't my native language and I need time to read and 
study / understand your message !!

I will get back asap. ;-)

Once more thanks and cheers, 
svobi



   
On Tue, 2008-02-12 at 10:37 -0600, Tommy Trussell wrote:
> On 2/11/08, SYNass IT Ubuntu / Linux <i-ubux at synass.net> wrote:
> 
> > Yes, there is a fatal danger with JPilot and Treo !!
> >
> > Not only between these two:
> > It's between Evolution, JPilot and Treo !!!
> >
> >
> > I really do not accept nor understand why there are NO warnings of
> > this fatal conflict !!
> 
> Here is the situation as I understand it. Jpilot is not normally
> installed in Ubuntu -- you have to install it yourself. So the
> "typical" Ubuntu user will be unaware of it.
> 
> I use Jpilot because it's a good replacement for the "old fashioned"
> palm desktop software. It continues to work with newer Palm models,
> even though it does not have all the features people may expect, such
> as a sync daemon.
> 
> The Gnome developers included gnome-pilot in their distribution, which
> as you noticed, does not co-exist with jpilot because it DOES include
> a sync daemon -- in other words, as soon as you set it up, any time
> you are logged into your Gnome desktop it will be looking for whether
> you have pressed the sync button on your cable or cradle. Because of
> this, you must disable the sync daemon in order for jpilot to access
> the device.
> 
> Based on my experiments, the only way to permanently disable the
> gnome-pilot sync daemon after you have set it up is to open the hidden
> directory .gnome2 and delete the gnome-pilot.d directory. (full path:
> ~/.gnome2/gnome-pilot.d/ )
> 
> ALSO based on my experiments, you should not LOSE any data if you are
> careful to never activate any of the gnome conduits (Except Backup,
> which should be safe because it should always copy FROM your pilot --
> just don't ever RESTORE your pilot without checking the files
> carefully). However if the Gnome daemon is running you will have a
> hard time getting jpilot to work right. So delete the gnome-pilot.d
> directory if you want to use Jpilot.
> 
> > My suggestion would be:
> > The Evolution and JPilot developer teams shall join and
> > explain us Ubuntu users (experts and newbies) about this danger
> > and how to setup accordingly !
> 
> I am not certain, but I suspect there is NO "JPilot Team" -- I believe
> there is only one person, and if he is still volunteering to work on
> Jpilot I am sure he might appreciate any KIND assistance you could
> offer. I see he also has a place for monetary donations.
> 
> Alternatively, it looks to me like a programmer might be able to alter
> Jpilot to work correctly with the gnome-pilot daemon, so that might be
> an alternative for people who use Gnome but do not want to synchronize
> with Evolution. If gnome-pilot was aware of the existence of Jpilot
> maybe it could avoid the conflict you mentioned by only activating
> EITHER the Evolution or Jpilot conduit for each database.
> 
> The (official) Palm software has lots of warnings saying to never run
> more than one conduit on the same data. And when something goes wrong,
> the best you can do is restore from a backup BEFORE the error. At
> worst you can do a hard-reset of the Palm and start entering  your
> data from scratch.
> 
> (I've already had to restore a backup to my new Treo because I
> accidentally copied a .pdb from an old Palm which conflicted with the
> new data. Fortunately it's easy to restore from a backup when you are
> very careful.)
> 
> BY THE WAY, unlike the Gnome software, Jpilot does not support
> restoring data from a backup -- I believe you must use the pilot-link
> utilities from the command line. That's what I have done anytime my
> Palm fails or when I am switching from one Palm unit to another. They
> are not "user friendly" like the Gnome software, but I have found the
> utilities to be very reliable. I do not know how well the Gnome
> restore function works.
>