Synching you Palm Tungsten|T to J-Pilot over USB on Ubuntu Debian GNU/Linux

Ok, simple enough.

Install J-Pilot (I used apt, apt-get install jpilot !)

• Navigate the menu to File -> Preferences
• Select the “Settings’ tab”
• Enter usb: in the “Serial Port” field.
• Select “OK”
• Press the HotSync button on the cradle.
• Click the HotSync button on the left of the J-Pilot window.

Next for some plugins, watch this space!

Palm Pilot: Backing stuff up over USB on Ubuntu Debian GNU/Linux

Quite easy really. Once you have the usb connection validated (see earlier post), backing up is simply a matter of :

pilot-xfer -p usb: -b ~/my-new-palm-backup-dir

You can also do a local update (-u palm-backup-dir) or a sync (-s palm-backup-dir).

Further options are available with pilot-xfer --help

Now to have a look at J-Pilot, a GUI. (no, it’s not written in Java)

Palm Tungsten T, USB, Pilot-Link, Ubuntu Debian GNU/Linux

Couldn’t get my old Palm Tungsten T to work with pilot link. After reading around and trying various things with dev files, I eventually found this post about a bug in pilot link.

Sure enough, removing the visor module with

sudo modprobe -r visor

meant the Palm now responded to

pilot-xfer -p usb: -l

and I got a lot of output about files on the Palm when I hit the sync button on the USB cradle.

So, I have added

blacklist visor

to

/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

so that module won’t be loaded in the future.

Hopefully this bodes well for my attempts at seamless synchronisation of my Palm Tungsten|T on Ubuntu

Want to see the date and time in the Mutt mail client when reading e-mail ?

Then add the following to your ~/.muttrc

ignore *
unignore from date subject to cc
unignore organization organisation x-mailer: x-newsreader: x-mailing-list:
unignore posted-to:

Really, you just need to add unignore date. This snippet above firstly turns everything off, then selectively decides to show the headers as listed with unignore.

I have been slightly annoyed for a while now that my Mutt configuration wasn’t displaying the send-time when i was reading emails. I had the date in the e-mail list, but nothing in the actual email.

Finally I got to look it up

Linux on USB disks : Damn Small Linux

Today I tried out installing two separate, cut-down, versions of Linux onto a USB drive.

This post details my experience with damn small linux.

Damn Small Linux

I tried getting various files, including the embedded zip file, but failed to install to
a USB disk. The idea seemed pretty simple, unzip the files onto the USB
disk, run sys linux. Go. But it just wouldn’t work. Kept reporting
missing files early in boot.

The alternative, boot into the system form the iso and install from there, also failed.

Note, in both cases I am booting into a virtual machine, not natively.

http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/damnsmalllinux.org/current/dsl-4.2.5.iso

Instead of burning a CDR I booted the cd image with Qemu, a free virtual machine emulator (available in Ubuntu Debian Gnu/Linux)

qemu -k en-gb -m 512 -localtime -boot d -cdrom dsl-4.2.5.iso /dev/sdb1

I provided the USB drive as the hard-drive to the virtual machine
(/dev/sdb1) and instructed the boot drive to be the cd (‘-cdrom
cd-image.iso’) with the option ‘-boot d’.

DSL booted up into the GUI without issue.

Then
I selected the install option “USB-HDD Pendrive Install.” from the DSL Menu -> Apps -> Tools

I also tried HDD install.

Neither work. The filesystem has errors on creation. Might try again when booted native from the CD, instead of through the virtual macine.

Linux on USB disks : Puppy Linux

Today I tried out installing two separate, cut-down, versions of Linux onto a USB drive.

This post details my experience with puppy linux.

Puppy linux

I tried getting various files but ended up using the iso download file.

ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/puppylinux/puppy-3.01-seamonkey.iso

Instead of burning a CDR I booted the cd image with Qemu, a free virtual machine emulator (available in Ubuntu Debian Gnu/Linux)

qemu -k en-gb -m 512 -localtime -boot d -cdrom puppy-3.01-seamonkey.iso /dev/sdb1

I provided the USB drive as the hard-drive to the virtual machine (/dev/sdb1) and instructed the boot drive to be the cd (‘-cdrom cd-image.iso) with the option ‘-boot d’.

I booted into XVESA, XORG didn’t work.
Then I selected the install option “Install to IDE flash drive.” from the puppy installer at Menu -> Setup -> Puppy Universal Installer

I shut down the virtual machine, and rebooted, this time from the newly set-up USB disk, with:

qemu -k en-gb -m 512 -localtime /dev/sdb1

Worked fine, no issues !

Previously I had tried downloading other puppy linux files from the download server, but failed to install to a USB disk (without too much trying I must admit though in fairness)

Creating labels for disks in Ubuntu Debian GNU/Linux

The ability to create or change the disk label of fat/fat32/vfat file systems/partitions doesn’t come with Parted; yet is quite simple to achieve with Ubuntu Debian GNU/Linux .

This comes in very handy when you have a number of fat devices (like USB, SD, etc) and want something more meaningful than just “disk” as its name.

Get mtools if you haven’t it already
sudo apt-get install mtools

Create a configuration file to avoid some error reporting
echo "mtools_skip_check=1" > ~/.mtoolsrc

Check where your disk is in the linux devices
mount

Label your disk
mlabel -i /dev/sdb1 -s ::my_disc

…and there you have it.

Disconnect the device and reconnect it and the label will show when it is auto mounted.

Undelete files on a vfat partition in Ubuntu Debian GNU/Linux

I have recently used the ‘photorec’ component of the ‘testdisk’ application for recovering files from FAT32 file systems.

I had used it before to recover files from general USB devices and others like Compact Flash/MMC/Secure Digital media with great success.

Then, I was focusing on recovery of photos and movies.

This time I was looking for various non-image files. Again I was suitably impressed by its coverage, and its simplicity in terms of use and speed.

They name may suggest only photos, but this is a great piece of software, regardless of what kind of file you are trying to recover.

Spoofing your Browser

Web servers sometimes behave differently for different browsers, for compatibility reasons usually, but not neccessarily.

If you want to test how a system or site behaves for different browsers, plugins for firefox such as the ‘User Agent Switcher‘ can help. With it you can enter any data for the User Agent string.

The User Agent String is essentially a text string that your browser sends with each request to tell the server what browser, operating system, extensions/plugins, etc you are using.

I didn’t initially find the format or usage of this plugin to be very intuitive, but thankfully there are importable files online with settings for many of the more common combinations of browser/os etc. One such list I have used is at http://qainsight.net. Check for updates to the version of the script. Right now the site is offline, but the latest (March 2008, from internet caches) appears to be here.

Last I read it does not properly cater for the different User Agent String formats of other browsers, for instance the IE and Firefox string are quite different in both content and organisation. So while it will usually work, it may sometimes fail, and will probably not hide the fact of what browser you are actually using from those who might really want to know…

Address Book with Mutt on Ubuntu Debian GNU/Linux

I have been using Mutt MUA for a little while now and it is apparent that I need some kind of address book. The solution outlined here saves address automatically when you send email.

This solution is better for me than saving received addresses. Think spam etc.

The addressbook used os lbdb, little brother database.

My lbdb is installed and setup with the following in ~/.lbdbrc


# my lbdb config file

# methods to search [www.spinnaker.de/lbdb/]
METHODS=”m_inmail”
#m_muttalias m_palm m_gpg m_ldap

To save addresses when sending, I replace the mutt sendmail option which was using esmtp to now point to a custom script.
The script uses the tee command to send a copy of the mail to lbdb for address harvesting, and another copy to esmtp as before. I also added an option to tell mutt to use lbdb for address queries.

The changed and new options in ~/.muttrc are


set sendmail="~/esmtp-lbdb.sh"
set envelope_from=yes

# use lbdb for email address querying
set query_command=”/usr/bin/lbdbq ‘%s’”

The script esmtp-lbdb.sh is as follows


#!/bin/bash
#
# Script must run with Bash so keep above
# send mail with esmtp but send a copy to lbdb-fecthaddr to harvest address
#
echo -e \\n \\n MARK \\n \\n >> /tmp/test.log
echo "$@" >> /tmp/test.log

# harvest mail (stdin) and major to address
# tee the stdin,
# tee splits input into two copies, one to named file, one to stdout
# instead of named file, we redirect to command, and the other copy to stdout is piped to a second command
#
# the first command harvests email addresses from the input email
# the second command sends the input e-mail, and takes the parameters via “$@” which are the from and to/cc/etc addresses
tee >(lbdb-fetchaddr -a) | /usr/bin/esmtp -v -X /tmp/esmtp.log “$@”

When sending an email in mutt, I can press CTRL-T to get the list of addresses from lbdb and choose one for inclusion.