... or at last that's what they call it ;)
As a student, I have holidays since a week now. However, as the company I'm working for will attend at this year's MWC I kept spinning for another week.
Now, finally, I have a bit free time. So far the theory. In fact I still have a lot to do. My work for this term's Artificial Intelligence course is not yet finished completely (and time is running, exams are in two weeks). Nevertheless, after such a long time of not doing much funny things for my own, I spent some time with playing around this weekend.
First: I returned completey to Fedora now. Don't know why, but somehow I can work best with this disto. Not to bash any of the others around there, but after several years working with Fedora, I simply know it best ;) This time however I decided to set up both of my PCs in a more secure way than ever: Both are now encrypted completely. Certainly, I am not a #1 target for our state's security forces but after watching a somehow worrying decumentation recently I though that's better.
Both PCs work like a charm now, the encryption currently doesn't feed up too much performance. Only my Asus F3JM was a bit of a problem: Fedora 12 uses by default the new (yet still experimental) Nouveau driver. Despite it worked pretty well for what I tested, as I rely on 3D acceleration, Nouveau is not yet an option for me. Now, after doing so several times in the past I just installed NVidias closed source driver as usual. And ended up w/o X one reboot later :( The problem is, that Nouveau is still loaded and therefore blocks nvidia driver from getting control of the video device. However - and that's for what I love Linux - it's rather easy to get around this problem: I just followed steps and that's was it.
Additionally, I decided to do a "install from scratch", i.e. not copied my complete configuration back after installation. This proved to be useful, since I discovered some neat little settings in KMail, which I somehow managed to ignore for years. Much more: During some post-installation package search I discovered, that Fedora still ships the KDEPIM plugin for OpenSync. I missed this plugin heavily in openSuSE, as I got a new mobile last December - and that time I watched out to buy one which is possible to sync with Linux. I ended up with Nokia's 5800 XpressMusic. An exellent mobile btw, it even supports Ogg (if you install additional software, e.g. FolderPlay).
To sync it with KDEPIM, I had to install OpenSync and the required plugins. Additionally, I used the MultiSync frontend:
su -c "yum install libopensync-plugins-kdepim libopensync-plugins-syncml multisync"
Then, I just used MultiSync for synchronization:
The KDEPIM plugin doesn't require additional configuration, and also the SyncML plugin needed just some few changes. Here is what I have (and works fine):
<config>
<!-- (Only for bluetooth) The bluetooth address if the bluetooth mode is selected -->
<bluetooth_address></bluetooth_address>
<!-- (Only for bluetooth) The bluetooth channel to use. `sdptool browse $MAC` to search for the correct channel -->
<bluetooth_channel></bluetooth_channel>
<!-- (Only for USB) The usb interface number of the SYNCML-SYNC target. use syncml-obex-client -u (you will need access to the USB raw device) to find it. -->
<interface>0</interface>
<!-- The string that the plugin will use to identify itself. Some devices need a special string here. -->
<identifier>PC Suite</identifier>
<!-- The syncml version to use: 0 for 1.0, 1 for 1.1 and 2 for 1.2 -->
<version>1</version>
<!-- if the plugin should use wbxml -->
<wbxml>1</wbxml>
<!-- The username to use. Leave empty to not require a username -->
<username></username>
<!-- the password for the username -->
<password></password>
<!-- sets the connection type to use. 5 means obex over usb, 2 means obex over bluetooth -->
<type>5</type>
<!-- If wbxml is enabled, defines wether the wbxml should use string tables -->
<usestringtable>1</usestringtable>
<!-- Never send ADD command, but send REPLACE (not needed normally) -->
<onlyreplace>0</onlyreplace>
<!-- Workaround around for mobile phones which only use local timestamps and _no_ UTC timestamps! -->
<onlyLocaltime>0</onlyLocaltime>
<!-- Sets the maximum allowed size in bytes of incoming messages (some device need this option set). Example: 10000 -->
<recvLimit>50000</recvLimit>
<maxObjSize>0</maxObjSize>
<!-- The name of the contacts db. Must be the same as the phones sends -->
<contact_db>Contacts</contact_db>
<!-- The name of the calendar db. Must be the same as the phones sends -->
<calendar_db>Calendar</calendar_db>
<!-- The name of the note db. Must be the same as the phones sends -->
<note_db>Notes</note_db>
</config>
I have my mobile connected via USB. The device ID can be found out by running
syncml-obex-client -u
A first test worked very well so far: The result is much better than the way I used before (export contacts to file and imported on the phone), and calendar entries are also transferred correctly both ways :)
OK, that's for now. I hopefully will finish my Intelligend Playlist series this week and return to programming very soon ;) Until then:
Have a lot of fun!