Palm LifeDrive 4Go and Ubuntu Gutsy

I bought it because it was fully supported by Ubuntu. I used this Palm to sync with all my appointments and as an extra 4Go drive space. But from edgy, there has been an unfortunate regression that has completely borked sync and mount.

  • Sync
    I use evolution just because it is handy. I tried Thunderbird + jpilot, but I prefer to have it all in one place.
    To have the LifeDrive sync properly with evolution/gnome-pilot, add a /etc/udev/rules.d/10-custom.rules file containing: 

    BUS="usb", SYSFS{product}="Palm Handheld*", KERNEL="ttyUSB*", NAME{ignore_remove}="pilot", MODE="666"

    I also had to add the visor module at the end of /etc/modules

  • Mount
    Enable drive mode on the Palm Lifedrive and find your drive device:

    blkid
/dev/sda1: LABEL="LIFEDRIVE" UUID="1234-5678" TYPE="vfat"

    Then create a mount point, for ex:

    sudo mkdir /mnt/LIFEDRIVE

    Edit /etc/fstab and add the following line at the bottom of the file:

    /dev/sda1       /mnt/LIFEDRIVE    vfat    user,noauto 0 0

This partially works. If I enable drive mode again, or logout/login or reboot (I reboot at least twice a day, this is a laptop), the drive device gets changed. I’m now with /dev/sde1 :D
Would anyone have an idea about what’s going on? Many thanks in advance.

References

PalmDeviceSetup ubuntu wiki page
UF thread
LP bug

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3 thoughts on “Palm LifeDrive 4Go and Ubuntu Gutsy”

  1. Paul

    I’m no expert, but I’ve had a similar problem before when updating the fstab file – the device kept changing.

    It seems to work if you use the UUID instead of /dev/sde1
    i.e.
    UUID=1234-5678 /media/LIFEDRIVE vfat user,noauto 0 0

  2. bapoumba Post author

    Thanks Paul, I’ll try that and report back :)
    I’m running Ubuntu Hardy now, and have not plugged my palm in yet.

  3. Pingback: Palm LifeDrive 4Go and Ubuntu Hardy « b-initials

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