[plug] Linux Laptop IrDA -> Palm

[Mark Nold]

Here's my mini-howto:

1. Install RH 7.1 ... now i'm not really sure what you want from this but it 
did actually come with all the right modules compiled. They are:
irda
irtty
ircomm (or maybe ircom-tty)

Of course you could download the more recent kernel and compile this.. i would 
suggest using whatever 7.1 or later is using though. (BTW: My reading suggest 
that you must compile these as modules to the kernel)

1.1 Get the latest irda-utils and compile em. ( 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/irda/ click on the Files link to get the most 
recent 0.9.14 worked for me when nothing else did)

2. add the following to your /etc/modules.conf

#IrDA Stuff
alias tty-1disc-11 irtty
alias char-major-161 ircomm-tty
alias char-major-10-187 irnet

I think you can refresh these with depmod -a , otherwise reboot ;)


3. Make sure you have the right devices...
You will need /dev/ircomm0 for palm pilot stuff (but there are others like 
irnet and irlpt for network and printing via IR... i havent tried these yet...)
Its recommended you create a symbolic link (ln -s) from /dev/pilot to 
/dev/ircomm0 as most software looks for /dev/pilot (and you may want to use 
your real cradle at some stage.. it will probably be faster for large backups). 
RH7.1 created these all for me quite nicely, but the README with irda-utils 
says

Device entries you will need to use IrCOMM:
mknod /dev/ircomm0 c 161 0
mknod /dev/ircomm1 c 161 1
mknod /dev/irlpt0 c 161 17
mknod /dev/irlpt1 c 161 17

4. Which port should you use for IR ? have a look at your BIOS and its should 
tell you, or run findchip -v which will report the chip type and IRQ (then 
compare to setserial /dev/ttyS0 and setserial /dev/ttyS1)

5. Now start irattach with
irattach /dev/ttyS1 -s 1
Unfortunatly this will look the same whether you have been successful or not.

6. do a lsmod to make sure the modules have been loaded (no guarentee of 
success) and a ps -ef | grep irattach to see if its still running (no guarentee 
of success), last but not least start irdadump and put your IR device near the 
port and you should get several replies from it. With a Palm you will see it 
reply with your Palm username. If you have got this far follow the instructions 
for kpilot or pilot-xfer as both work.



Now this is apparently the slow way of doing things, there is something called 
FIR (Fast IR) which can go up to 4 Mbs i think. I have this setup on mine and 
havent notice much difference in speed but this could could be a Palm 
limitation. Get this first stage working then we can from there.(I assume this 
would be extremely usefull for networking and printing)

A word of warning though when i ran setserial /dev/ttyS1 it happily reported 
that it was using IRQ3 but i couldnt get it to work... what i found was that my 
PCMCIA network card was already on IRQ 3 (i had a look a dmesg for this and 
later found a nice KDE tool for browsing this info which only confirmed it). 
I'm only at the stage of simply popping out the network card before booting.. 
this is a pain and i'll sort out something soon (i can configure the IRQ of the 
IR port in the bios) but while im dual booting with Windows i probably wont 
change anything.

Good luck and mail me if you need any more info.








Mark Nold
markn at enspace.com
Senior Consultant

Change is inevitable, except from vending machines.




On Monday, 28 May 2001 9:06, Russell Steicke [SMTP:r.steicke at bom.gov.au] wrote:
> On Mon, May 28, 2001 at 01:39:43AM +0800, Mark Nold wrote:
> ...
> > I can post some more details if anyone is interested... the actual process
> > is
>
> Yes, please.  I have had trouble with IR on my laptop as well, an Acer
> 518TE.  Your solutions could be very useful.
>
> > Mark Nold
> > markn at enspace.com
> > Senior Consultant
>
> --
> Russell Steicke
>
> -- Fortune says:
> "I am convinced that the manufacturers of carpet odor removing powder have
>  included encapsulated time released cat urine in their products.  This
>  technology must be what prevented its distribution during my mom's reign. 
 My
>
>  carpet smells like piss, and I don't have a cat.  Better go by some more."
> -- timw at zeb.USWest.COM, in alt.conspiracy