I am already trying Mandriva 2008 Spring free today - the Powerpack is already ordered - and did the default KDE3 installation first. Then I exactly followed the instruction for installing and configuring the PDA synchronisation:

http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2008.1_Synchronization

Unfortunately, I got stuck when trying to create a partnership in the mainscreen of the SynCE KDE PDA Manager. Running the synce-kpm on the shell, revealed the following error:


Any idea why this is and how I can solve the problem? Is it a library / packaging problem?

Can you try this? Quit synce-kpm , and at a console, run:

sync-engine

then run synce-kpm and try creating the partnership again. Look at the errors (there should be some) on the sync-engine console, and paste them here. Thanks.

I have followed your advice, but it only resulted in the SynCE-KPM error, I have posted above, and not in an error on the sync-engine console. Nevertheless, I have got it work with a trick, which I found out while playing with the system. Trying KDE, KDE4 and GNOME, I noticed that the partnerships on the device suddenly appeared in the Partnerships Manager tab when I logged out from KDE and logged in into GNOME. So I have found out, that I have to restart KDE after the first connection to the PDA to make the partnerships on the device appear in the SynCE KPM. Logging in into KDE again, I can then see the partnerships on the device and am now able to create a new partnership for KDE.

I have also noted, that the PDA was only detected after I had configured one of the network cards and that the SynCE KPM always crashed during the start after I had installed KDE4. In Kontact, there is a charset problem in KAdressbook with the imported data (not in the calendar and the tasks), then the usual timezone problem with import of dates into the calendar and the task reminders have vanished during the import. Well, I shall have a look at Evolution, if its synchronsation is already more mature. Very good was the speed of the synchronisation, which seemed to be much faster than under Windows! All in all, it looks promising despite the teething problems.

I followed the suggestions in this post, but when I entered sync-engine in the terminal (as user) I got the following:


This is using Mandriva One Spring 2008. Any ideas?

dcovn: are you on 2008 Spring? it's looking for the config file in the wrong place, but that should not happen in 2008 Spring, it's patched to fix that problem.

dolphin: the character set issues in KDE are a Kontact issue, I have a bug filed on it. Nothing intrinsically to do with synce / opensync, Kontact just doesn't handle this very well. It works fine in Evolution.

I'm running 2008 Spring as well, installed from scratch last night, and I have the exact same problem...

I had the exact same problem. The fix was:

- Quit SynCE-KPM
$ cd $HOME
$ mkdir .synce
$ cd .synce
$ cp /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/SyncEngine/config/config.xml .
- Start SynCE-KPM

Hope this helps!

Yes, that solved the error about the sync-engine not running and all that. Now I need to get the machine to see my PDA. Thanks for the help!

Note: I am indeed running Mandriva One 2008 Spring.

Now that synce-kpm shows no errors when I run it from a terminal, I am left trying to get it to recognize my device. I noticed in the wiki that the Mandriva firewall can interfere with the connection, but "Ethernet: rndis0" is not listed with "Ethernet: eth0" when the screen specifying interfaces to apply the firewall to come up, so I am guessing the problem is with rndis, but I am not sure. When I plug in the device and run dmesg this is what I get:



The device is an iPAQ running WM5. Any ideas about why synce-kpm is not seeing my device? I tried closing it and opening it while the device is connected, but still no change.

The same thing happened to me as well. I don't know what fixed it, but I completed the firewall configuration (while not seeing rndis0), then rebooted, and when I went into the firewall configuration again the rndis0 was there...

dcovn: the ipaq module is getting in the way. I was thinking of messing with the hardware detection tables to fix that before release, but I hadn't actually seen anyone run into it yet...now I have :\

You need to blacklist the ipaq module. Edit /etc/modprobe.conf and add this line:

blacklist ipaq

then restart.

sjaddow: well, yes, but there's no reason you should need to do that. I don't understand why it's looking in the wrong place. Let me see if I can figure it out...

ah. I bet I've got it. You guys have /backports repositories enabled. I dropped too much of a patch from the 0.11.1 package that went to backports. I'll fix it. Thanks.

The backports repository is on the repository list, but I have NOT selected it - neither as activated nor updates.

Is there a package version number I can use to check if the package came from the backports repository or not?

Oh, and by the way (I just saw the title of this thread): I'm running powerpack, not free...

I didn't remember enabling backports repositories, so I checked, and none of the backports repositories are enabled.

Also, I blacklisted the ipaq module as you suggested, and still no change. Dmesg gives:



And, rndis0 is still not appearing in the firewall configuration wizard.

sjaddow: Hmm. Crud.

Can you do:

rpm -q sync-engine

and give me the result? Thanks.

dcovn: looks like nothing's getting loaded for the device now. Uh - is it definitely a Windows Mobile 5+ device? We don't have anything for WM 2003 and earlier yet. If it's a WM2003 or earlier device, un-blacklist ipaq, and...er...if you read French, follow this...

http://www.frlinux.net/?section=portables&article=214

I'd like to get it going as nicely as WM5+ stuff does, but I don't have an old-skool test device :\

Yes, according to the About page, my device runs:

Microsoft® Windows Mobile™ Version 5.0
OS 5.1.1702 (Build 14366.1.0.1)
Processor: ARM920T PXA27x

I suppose I should try the steps for WM2003? My French is a bit rusty, but the commands themselves aren't localized. I'm sure I can muddle my way through it.

sync-engine-0.11.1-1mdv2008.1

dcovn: I'm not sure it'd help. um, can you try loading rndis_host , cdc_ether and usbnet modules manually and see if they seem to do anything?

sjaddow: that's the one from /backports , you got it installed somehow. I sent 0.11.1-2mdv to /backports yesterday, that fixes it, though if you already fixed it manually by copying the config file, that's fine.

Strange indeed, as /backports was never enabled by me. In the package manager, when I select "Backports" and "Installed" instead of "All" and "All", no packages are listed. The installed sync-engine has "Medium: None (installed)" in the package manager. Hmm, when I look through the list of installed packages a lot of them - if not most of them - have "Medium: None (installed)". That's not how it supposted to be, right?

When I try to update the package sources from the package manager the backports are listed as well, does this indicate they are active? The testing repositories are not shown in the list.

I'm not sure the 'installed' view works with the repository filters. I'm not quite sure what the situation on your system is, it's hard to tell from here...if you're worried about the /backports repos you may want to remove them completely.