Brief HOWTO: Palm Pilot Synchronization under Mandriva Linux 2005

I recently picked up a used Handspring Visor Deluxe, in great condition and housed in a leather case, from TradeMe for the princely sum of NZ$55. I buttumed, wearing my usual rose-tinted glbuttes, that I'd be able to hook it up to my PC and synchronise Evolution (running under Mandriva Linux 2005) without any dramas.

This was almost the case. Starting with a full installation of Mandriva Linux 2005, all I had to do was:

1. Download the evolution-pilot-2.0.4-3mdk.i586.rpm RPM which I found using the search facilities on rpm.pbone.net.

2. As root, install that RPM.

3. Configure Evolution as per section 8.2 of the Evolution help - this section makes mention of the Palm conduits that come with the evolution-pilot RPM. Why that RPM isn't on the DVD, I don't know.

You'll probably notice that only one of your Evolution task categories is being synchronised with the Palm Pilot. This is a known bug in Evolution - as far as I can tell it's been fixed, and if testing proceeds nicely should be resolved in Evolution 2.5. As for the other items, they synchronised perfectly.

If you're like me you'll want to install custom software to your Palm Pilot; to do this from the command line, you need to open a console and use:

gpilot-install-file MyApplication.prc