Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Phone synchronisation, finally
One of long standing things on my todo list was to make synchronisation work from my cell phone (Sony-Ericsson K750i) to some PIM application on Linux side (as a GNOME user Evolution is the natural choice). I tried it several times but it never actually worked. Today I gave it yet another try and I finally succeeded on first attempt :-).
As a first step I just wanted to make a backup of all things. Gammu can do it quite well and it's the tool I trust for this purpose:
gammu backup /tmp/phonebook.vcf
gammu backup /tmp/calendar.vcs
Now it's time to play with OpenSync. We will use setup guide and SyncML guide as a starting point. As I had in past problems with both sides - both phone and Evolution failed with some random errors, I wanted to go step by step. So I started with setting up phone to files synchronisation:
msynctool --addgroup file2phone
msynctool --addmember file2phone file-sync
msynctool --addmember file2phone syncml-obex-client
Now we need to configure file storage, just tell it where it should store the data:
msynctool --configure file2phone 1
And change path in your editor to something like:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
<!-- directory path for file-sync -->
<path>/home/foo/phone-backup/</path>Now the more tricky part comes, we need to set up phone end:
msynctool --configure file2phone 2
Fortunately we can use example from the SyncML guide and just fill in
Bluetooth address (you can get it using hcitool scan) and channel
(sdptool browse 00:b0:0b:fa:ce:00):
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
<bluetooth_address>00:b0:0b:fa:ce:00</bluetooth_address>
<bluetooth_channel>7</bluetooth_channel>
<identifier>Sony Ericss</identifier>
<version>1</version>
<wbxml>1</wbxml>
<username></username>
<password></password>
<type>2</type>
<usestringtable>0</usestringtable>
<onlyreplace>0</onlyreplace>
<onlyLocaltime>0</onlyLocaltime>
<recvLimit>0</recvLimit>
<maxObjSize>0</maxObjSize>
<contact_db>Contacts</contact_db>
<calendar_db>Agenda</calendar_db>
<note_db>Notes</note_db>
</config>
And now we should be able to synchronise whole phonebook from phone to selected directory:
msynctool --sync file2phone
Okay, this works, let's try more complicated thing - include Evolution in the chain. The steps are the same, config file for phone is the same, Evolution plugin has sane defaults you usually don't have to touch:
msynctool --addgroup phone2evo
msynctool --addmember phone2evo evo2-sync
msynctool --addmember phone2evo syncml-obex-client
msynctool --configure phone2evo 1
msynctool --configure phone2evo 2
But now comes the tricky thing - Sony-Ericsson phones usually have something
broken around notes (or it is broken in OpenSync, I don't care, simply
synchronisation fails without this step) and we have to avoid synchronisation
of them. This can be done by changing filter file in group we've created above
(usually in file ~/.opensync-0.22/group2/filter.conf):
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<filter>
<note/>
</filter>
And finally we can start the synchronisation and it should work:
msynctool --sync phone2evo
You can also GUI multisync0.90 to do the configuration and start
synchronisation, but it is not much different, you also still have to edit
XML files.