Installing files on a PDA in Ubuntu 9.04

One of the issues that has arisen in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope is the fact that the panel icon for the gpiloted panel applet has gone from a visible icon to a simple dot. The problem is that there’s no longer any way to drag and drop files onto the icon to get installed on your PDA, a problem that has become a very big deal to many of us who still use PDAs and no longer have a way to move files onto it. I ran into the problem mostly because I am no longer able to take images that I find online (such as at ICHC) and drop them onto my Sony CLIÉ to share with others.

The bug does have a fix committed, but Alexander Gieg has been kind enough to create a pair of .deb files you can use. Simply download the two files he links to and follow his instructions for installing them and then add the applet back to the panel. Voilà! You have a working gnome-pilot applet again.

If you find that you’d rather not install files that haven’t been officially released yet I found a very handy way to get files installed on your PDA via the command line (CLI).

First you want to get the files you want installed placed in a specific folder. I use the folder that was set up by the Windows installer for my CLIÉ when I ran it under CrossOver (the folder is also available if you simply run the Windows installer under WINE), and once I install files from it onto my PDA I delete them so I keep the folder cleared out except for the new files that I have to transfer over. Once the file(s) you want to transfer are in that folder, open your Terminal and use a change directory command to move into that folder. You can also use the very handy terminal-here script (available here and here) to simply right click within a Nautilus window opened to the desired folder and select the script. On my system the terminal command is

cd <path-to-directory>

Once you’re in the folder with the CLI, you can move either a single file or all of the files in the directory to your PDA with a simple command.

Single file: gpilot-install-file <filename>

All files in the directory: gpilot-install-file *

Once the command has gotten the files ready to upload them you will be asked to connect your PDA to your computer and press the sync button. You will see your PDA connect with the computer and the files will be transferred, complete with a report of the success of the operation.

If you want to transfer some of the files in the directory to your PDA but not all of them you can use wildcards to select the files such as I did to move all of the files over. Just modify the command to select the appropriate files.

If you need to update any of the files synchronized, either for your calendar, address book, AvantGo or anything else you have on your PDA you will need to do another sync to get the files updated as the sync for moving the files to your PDA only performs that specific upload.

Yooouge thanks to Alexander for creating the .deb files. Hopefully they will make their way to jaunty-backports before long.