01 Oct 07 It is getting easier to sync your cell phone with your linux box

Very long time without posting, but a good one now, it is getting easier
to sync your cell phone with your linux, I have just upgraded my Kubuntu
to gutsy (7.10) and just got a very good surprise, not it comes with the
new version of Kitchensync, this one makes it really easy to setup the
synchronization, and you do not need to touch a single configuration
file, you can do everything from the great KDE GUI.

When I open Kytchensync (K Menu, Utilities, KitchenSyncFilter), I can
see the list of all “Sync profiles” I have already created, to sync my
phone I need only to click on the Synchronize button at the tool bar, or
in the “Synchronize Now” at the bottom of the selected profile.

Lets take a look at the setup I use to sync my Nokia N80 with Kontact
(you can use it with any symbian device).

I just clicked in the Edit Group, but you can create a new group, and
just add a KDE PIM and a “SyncML over OBEX client”.


You have lots of possible endpoints, I have just a few installed on my
machine, but Kitchensync uses opensync as its backend, so it has support
for Evolution2, Google Calendar and many more client/server points. The
great thing is that you can sync more than two points at a time.

The KDE PIM member does not need any configuration, the only problem is
that you need to close Kontact before synchronizing, the OpenSync group
tells that when KDE 4 is out this problem will be fixed.

Now I need to configure the connection to my Nokia N80, configure the
MAC address of your symbian smart phone and select channel 13 (for the
N80 13 is the right channel, for other models this can change), you can
use Konqueror to discover the MAC address of your cell phone Bluetooth
port (I do not know if there is any key combination to show this number
in the display).


In the Data Bases tab, make sure your contacts database is named
“Contacts”, your calendar and tasks database is named “Calendar” and
your notes database is named “Notes”, if you have changed this on the
cell phone, change here according,


In the options tab, configure the same username and password that you
configured in your cell phone to the “PC Suite” synchronization profile,
I could not make it work without a username and a password, so you need
to choose one.

I had to choose the version 1.0 of SyncML for synchronization because in
the tests the synchronization freezed 3 times when I tested the version
1.1, and I cound’t even connect to the cell phone using the version 1.2.

Make sure the application identifier in this screen is “PC Suite” I have
tried some other names but for some strange reason this one is the only
that seems to work (yes, I created the other test profiles in the cell
phone too).


If you want to sync another point with your cell phone and Kontact, for
example google calendar, just add the member and configure it as in the
screenshot bellow (if you want to know my password, it is 10 stars )



Well, I think now you can get your cell phone to sync to your linux box
too.

I’ll make some tests with gnome and evolution and will post here the
step by step.

If any one of you test this procedure with any other cell phone please
let me know if it works and what changes to this setup ware needed, then
I’ll keep here an updated list (or if you want to give-me a cell phone
to test I’ll be very happy )

Thanks for taking time to read this.

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Tags: cool factor, freeware, network, office