OESF Portables Forum
Everything Else => Desktop Operating Systems Issues => Zaurus General Forums => Archived Forums => Mac Issues => Topic started by: dhns on November 30, 2004, 03:22:53 pm
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Dear all,
after running the beta test phase and fixing about 50 bugs, the (first) final release is out. I hope that you are happy about the progress we have made. And we hope we can help to make the Zaurus - Macintosh combination much more popular by closing that missing link! Please spread out this news.
This release has now become shareware. This means you can fully test the program without any restrictions. But you will get a reminder message every time you want to sync until you register the software...
The fee of 10$ (plus EU VAT if applicable) is low so that we think everybody can afford it. But you are invited to add a voluntary donation. And be assured that we won't get rich from that
If you find a bug (and statistics says there are at least one or two left over) or want to propose new features, please send a mail to mailto:zmacsync@dsitri.de (http://mailto:zmacsync@dsitri.de) or use the special ZMacSync forum at http://www.dsitri.de/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=18 (http://www.dsitri.de/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=18).
Development will continue and the areas we want to address in upcoming versions are:
* find the remaining bugs
* make Calendar sync really working (so that dates and recurrences are displayed properly)
* make Sync of Calendar, ToDo, Notes work from Zaurus to the Mac
* add an Autosync mode - just start ZMacSync, plug in the Zaurus and let it sit there and track all changes to the Mac addresses and calendars in the background until you need and unplug it
* Tiger support - We expect that ZMacSync will run on Tiger. But integration with the new iSync frameworks is a different story.
* add a real "Manual"
Thanks again to all participants of the beta tests!
-- hns
Download: http://www.dsitri.de/wiki.php?page=ZMacSync (http://www.dsitri.de/wiki.php?page=ZMacSync)
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Great news, dhns!
Went and purchased ZMacSync 1.5 and tried it.
Works great so far!!
It feels great to finally be able to sync with my Mac!
All you Macsters out there should check this out and purchase it if you want to sync...small price to pay to have a way to do this.
Look forward to continued improvements/refinements....
You've been extremely responsive to user input, which is also appreciated.
Thanks SO much for providing this sync solution to the Mac/Z community!
Mark
SL-C3000
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I'm afraid this program is not yet ready for real use - even ignoring that some of the sync features are not yet available.
Here are some of the problems I have had:
ZMacSync hung while syncing my address book of about 700 entries (or maybe it just was taking a very long time - but there's no progress bar or other report so you can tell the difference).
On first sync, *identical* entries on the Zaurus and the Mac were copied across to the Mac (they were put on the Zaurus from the Mac in the first place using ZMacSync 1.0a3), resulting in hundreds of duplicate entries in my Mac's address book.
Could not connect to a Zaurus which has a passcode set (which is necessary if your Zaurus has a static IP address!)
[The documentation does say this might not work, I admit. However, I have no trouble using Fugu (sftp) to connect to the Zaurus with a passcode set.]
On another point, the installation document assumes the user is using a USB cable for syncing, rather than WiFi, and it could say what is necessary in the latter case.
So, while the program holds promise, and I wish the author well in getting it all going, it seems a little premature to be expecting us to pay for it given that it is both incomplete and buggy.
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I'm afraid this program is not yet ready for real use - even ignoring that some of the sync features are not yet available.
Hi,
sorry that you have these problems with ZMacSync. We will try to solve them if they can be repeated. Other users have reported that it now works for them without issues.
ZMacSync hung while syncing my address book of about 700 entries (or maybe it just was taking a very long time - but there's no progress bar or other report so you can tell the difference).
There are reports from the author of AJZaurusUSB that the USB hardware of the SL5500 devices is not stable and might stop communication. So ZMacSync will sit there and wait. To test, you could try to start a parallel ssh session to the Zaurus to find out if IP over USB is hanging.
On first sync, *identical* entries on the Zaurus and the Mac were copied across to the Mac (they were put on the Zaurus from the Mac in the first place using ZMacSync 1.0a3), resulting in hundreds of duplicate entries in my Mac's address book.
This is a result of the way syncing works. ZMacSync has no idea / makes no assumptions about the content of the records. So, entries are identified by an "unique-ID" tag. If there are initially entries on both machines which look the same, they are still processed as two different entries having different "unique-ID". So, records apparently identical are therefore copied to the peer. In normal operation, this allows to reliably detect deletions, additions and modifications and allows to sync only what really has been changed. And to limit the data loss by conversion from one machine to the other. It is basically the same mechanism as Apple uses for iSync.
The solution for your problem is to start with a fresh and empty Zaurus address book (the 1.0a3 release did not yet have the unique-ID mechanism!). Sync will then copy all entries from the Mac to the Zaurus.
Could not connect to a Zaurus which has a passcode set (which is necessary if your Zaurus has a static IP address!)
[The documentation does say this might not work, I admit. However, I have no trouble using Fugu (sftp) to connect to the Zaurus with a passcode set.]
Yes, ssh and sftp can handle passcodes/passwords properly, but we have not yet found a mechanism to make a wrapper around the ssh command that can pass in the passcode. If you or somebody else knows of a solution we will be happy to integrate this feature.
On another point, the installation document assumes the user is using a USB cable for syncing, rather than WiFi, and it could say what is necessary in the latter case.
Nothing special or different. Just set the IP address of the Zaurus in the "i" popup. But nevertheless a good point for adding to the upcoming "Manual".
So, while the program holds promise, and I wish the author well in getting it all going, it seems a little premature to be expecting us to pay for it given that it is both incomplete and buggy.
Well, this is a matter of personal valuation - I think ZMacSync can already save a lot of time worth 10$. But in the shareware model that we have choosen, you are invited to download, evaluate and pay only if you are personally happy with it.
So, thank you very much for the hints for further improvement.
-- hns
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Nikolaus, thanks for the reply.
Here are a few further points of information, which I hope will help Nikolaus track down the problems.
(1) I was trying to sync using a WiFi connection to the Zaurus, not USB.
(2) ssh is working reliable to it from my Mac - I use Fugu to do sftp to copy files to and from my Zaurus all the time. I even copied the 200Mb Wikipedia using it...
(3) My Zaurus is a c860 with Sharp 1.30J ROM.
Also, a few further comments.
To be really useful, syncing should at least not try to copy absolutely identical records. In the longer run, some idea like the address book has of allowing the user to merge similar records would be the best solution to similar but different records, but I accept that this would need the program to become much more sophisticated.
Unfortunately, the current approach also makes it difficult to sync with two different Macs (desktop and laptop). Starting with a fresh and empty Zaurus address book is not compatible with the 2 Mac case. The stuff in Sync Services in Tiger is quite sophisticated, and may provide an answer in the longer term.
Anyway, a progress bar or similar while syncing would be useful feedback to users.
Regards
Ralph
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Nikolaus said: I think ZMacSync can already save a lot of time worth 10$.
And he is right. Even if it is still not working quite right, I did use an earlier version to get all my address data into my Zaurus, and doing that as a one-shot operation must have saved me much more than $10 of time.
So, I have just paid up!
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This has so much promise but falls short for me. It is worth mentioning that only Addressbook is bidirectional. I was looking for a way to sync my substantial calendar (which at work syncs with Exchange) - with my home IMac.
Unfortunately its seems there is no way to do this with this software. I'm probably not alone in that professionally I have to sync with Exchange (and do with Intellisync), but want to sync with my Mac as well. Any suggestions or is this coming in a future release?
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I was looking for a way to sync my substantial calendar ... Any suggestions or is this coming in a future release?
Hi,
it is being worked on. The reason why it takes a little longer is that there is no calendar framework installed on the Mac (contrary to the AddressBook framework). So we have to write our own to read and write iCalendar (.ics) files. Reading mostly works (besides not yet handling recurrent events and their exceptions). This needs a lot of testing before we dare to write to your calendar files.
But it is on high priority. Hope you can wait for that...
-- hns
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Excellent!
Just got round to trying this out, and now I have a mobile copy of my calendar. Of course bidirectionality would be nice too...but it is already worth the $10 and I'll gget round to paying soon.
A couple of bugs on the syncing:
all-day events seem to start a day early, ie my birthday runs from 0:00 on the _previous_ day, to 23:59 on the correct day (multi-day events also start a day early). It missed several events completely, and did not use the due date info on iCal to-do items.
James
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Wow! Finally! Great work. Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this sync solution. I will be sending my registration fee soon.
All I ever wanted was a way to sync OS X to my Z and this is the BEST way yet.
Thanks again for the effort!
TCG
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Is there any way users might have the option of synching with Entourage?
This isn't too much of a problem for me because I use a set of AppleScripts to sync my data from Entourage to the respective Apple apps. But the Entourage option might make it easier for some who use M$ Office suite exlusively, and it might also make some sync choices (calendar, notes, e-mail) on ZMacSync easier to enable.
This is one of the first apps I'll buy after I pick up my Z SL-6000 at Christmas!
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Is there any way users might have the option of synching with Entourage?
We have no experience with Entourage and its data formats/programming interfaces. But we have recently seen on VersionTracker that someone is working on an iSync plugin for Entourage. So if you sync Entourage with iSync, it will update the MacOS address, calendar, stickies databases. And then, you can sync with the Zaurus.
This might even become smoother when Tiger comes with new standardized iSync interfaces as promised in the WWDC reports.
For those interested in what is going on with ZMacSync:
Currently, we are rewriting the iCalendar access framework for the third time... The data format itself is not really complex (RFC2445) but making it useful for larger and multiple calendars and properly interwork with iCal is a little more complex. And it should support the optimal translation from/to the Zaurus calendar (which has its own limitations).
This framework will also become the heart of the Calendar application for myPDA-Zaurus-Edition, the "MacROM for the Zaurus".
We have also found a solution to use the Passcode, so that you can synchronize with a protected Zaurus (if e.g. connected to the Internet via WLAN). It needs some more testing and will then be published.
-- hns
http://www.dsitri.de/wiki.php?page=ZMacSync (http://www.dsitri.de/wiki.php?page=ZMacSync)
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What type of Z rom does Zmacsync work with - is it only Sharp and its pim db
or will this eventually also work with pdaXrom and/or oz? I am also guessing
that this will never sync directly with kopi/kapi? I guess once you have mac rom stable and
with its own PIM it won't matter cause you will have everything you need as far
as PIM and sync goes. But will we then have to give up access to all the other
apps from other roms (or is this going to be based on sharp so all of those apps
will still work). I hope this is not all in some faq - I do appologize in advance if it is.
No matter what, thanks for pushing mac stuff - it is great to see.
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What type of Z rom does Zmacsync work with - is it only Sharp and its pim db
or will this eventually also work with pdaXrom and/or oz? I am also guessing
that this will never sync directly with kopi/kapi?
Currently it works with original Sharp ROMs and it has been reported by users to work on Cacko.
At the moment our goal is to provide a working solution "right out of the box" for those who have just purchased their Zaurus. So, we have closely tied the ZMacSync architecture to the Sharp DTM database which is not available on pdaXrom or OZ.
For kapi/kopi there is at least an import/export function for doing manual sync as it understands the iCalendar, vCard data formats.
... But will we then have to give up access to all the other
apps from other roms (or is this going to be based on sharp so all of those apps
will still work).
Good point.
Currently, myPDA is just an application ipk that switches off Qtopia when being launched and itself launches an X-Server, a Window Manager, the System Menu Server, and the "Finder". So, X-based applications will work in this environment (but only if they find the required libraries). But Qt-based applications can't coexist.
No matter what, thanks for pushing mac stuff - it is great to see.
We love the Macintosh and the Zaurus - both have great concepts and superior hardware and industrial design. So we want to help to bring them much closer together (which got much more tailwind by the introduction of the C3000).
-- hns
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Well, I finally got around to trying the latest 1.5.1 version. I started from scratch. I wanted to get addresses from my PC in Outlook to my Mac Address Book. I started with an empty Zaurus, synced from my PC to my Zaurus, then from my Zaurus to my Mac.
All the addresses that were previously in the Mac Address Book are now gone.
Time to restore from the backup.
I think this software still needs a lot of work.
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Well, I finally got around to trying the latest 1.5.1 version. I started from scratch. I wanted to get addresses from my PC in Outlook to my Mac Address Book. I started with an empty Zaurus, synced from my PC to my Zaurus, then from my Zaurus to my Mac.
All the addresses that were previously in the Mac Address Book are now gone.
Time to restore from the backup.
Ganoe,
sorry that you have this unhappy experience.
To better understand what has happened: how did you "start from scratch"?
Did you delete all entries on the Zaurus by a Delete all... command?
Or did you do a hard reset of the Zaurus?
-- hns
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I did a "delete all" within the different apps. Let me guess, the sync software then assumed I wanted to delete everything on my Mac? I guess that's the right behavior, but I think some kind of warning that everything was about to be deleted would've been appropriate.
I have to be honest, I really prefer the way the Zaurus Windows sync software works. It prompts you with the numbers of additions/deletions/changes and gives you much finer grain control.
Let me try another sync and see if it gets me any closer to what I want.
[time passes]
I guess I should've read the manual and done a Bidirectional Copy, but that didn't seem to do it either. Now I have everything I want on my Mac (everything that was on both devices), but for some reason the Zaurus now only has the addresses that were originally on my Mac and all the addresses that were originally on the Zaurus are gone.
It also stuck an extra card with "No Name" in one of my groups in the Mac Address Book.
I tried another sync to see if it'd pull everything together and it didn't do anything.
Then I tried another Bidirectional Copy, and now everything is on both devices plus a bunch of duplicates on both. What was duplicated seems a little inconsistent (at least on the Mac). Now everything that was on my Mac in the first place is on the Zaurus twice.
I don't know. From here, I guess I'll clean up things on my Mac and reset my Zaurus. That should get me to wherre I wanted to be. My addresses needed a cleaning anyhow.
Well, at least I can now print my address labels from my Mac.
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I did a "delete all" within the different apps. Let me guess, the sync software then assumed I wanted to delete everything on my Mac? I guess that's the right behavior, but I think some kind of warning that everything was about to be deleted would've been appropriate.
Yes, that is the way ZMacSync is working. But you are right - adding a warning message would be helpful if you are deleting let's say more than 10% of all records. On the other hand having to confirm all deletions would not be helpful for small daily changes. And, by the way, it indicates the number of deletions/additions etc. even before you press the Sync button.
I have to be honest, I really prefer the way the Zaurus Windows sync software works. It prompts you with the numbers of additions/deletions/changes and gives you much finer grain control.
I think I can make a Preferences setting for this. Some users prefer to get prompted and control - others want to have it just being magically synchronized in the background.
I guess I should've read the manual and done a Bidirectional Copy, but that didn't seem to do it either. Now I have everything I want on my Mac (everything that was on both devices), but for some reason the Zaurus now only has the addresses that were originally on my Mac and all the addresses that were originally on the Zaurus are gone.
Yes, for importing addresses it should be better to do the Copy (the next release will also have two unidirectional copy commands). This will never delete records.
It also stuck an extra card with "No Name" in one of my groups in the Mac Address Book.
Did it have any other contents? It might have been an invisible card on the Zaurus with no name entries.
Then I tried another Bidirectional Copy, and now everything is on both devices plus a bunch of duplicates on both. What was duplicated seems a little inconsistent (at least on the Mac). Now everything that was on my Mac in the first place is on the Zaurus twice.
I don't know. From here, I guess I'll clean up things on my Mac and reset my Zaurus. That should get me to wherre I wanted to be. My addresses needed a cleaning anyhow.
Sorry for that additional work and thanks for the illustration of the issue.
-- hns
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My first sync with ZMacSync hasn't gone as well as I'd hoped it would.
The straight "copy" function gives me the spinning beach ball. I've left it for 2 hours to see if it was just a hang, but no, the app simply isn't responding. Force quit and my Z says 169 addresses (of 370) have been copied, though they seem to be all there.
Only once did the sync x-fer most of my Mac files -- notes, to-dos, calendar -- to the Z. I don't know why or how it chose this particular time to work, but the calendar and to-dos only partially synced. I think I got a total of two to-dos and three or four calendar entries out of it. I don't know if Safari bookmarks are supposed to x-fer -- but one thing is for sure: they don't.
I've tried all sorts of different ways, such as selecting "ignore" or "reset" when prompted, deleting all Z entries and starting afresh, and so on. My umpteenth attempt is taking place now using the "ignore" function. ZMacSync is busy "Committing Zaurus-1 with Local-1". It looks slightly promising.
Is there something specific I should do to ensure a full first sync? Or is it a gradual process?
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Hi,
Is there anyway to measure the status of the first synch... to see if it is still working or if it is hung? I've run the sync and it is still chugging away... 20 minutes later. I'm just about ready to kill it and try again... but if it is halfway through then I would end up with lots of duplicates!
Anyway, I know the connection hasn't died because I can still ssh into my Zaurus. I can even see the dtm2xml command, I think! I just don't know how to see if it is hung or if it is still communicating.
I did a big kill and database reset on my Zaurus before running the synch.
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The calendar sync fails for me when I have repeat events. Everything subsequent to the repeat event is missed out. If I delete the repeat event, it seems to work pretty well, although all day events get extended into the previous day too.
James
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I am back from vacation...
... spinning beach ball. I've left it for 2 hours to see if it was just a hang, but no, the app simply isn't responding.
A typical sync should complete withing some minutes (in most cases even less).
So this indicates a real hanging call. The most probable reason is a corrupt DTM database. Please try the "dtm2xml reset database" command.
I think I got a total of two to-dos and three or four calendar entries out of it.
The calendar processing is still incomplete and can't handle all records properly. Most important is that it does not handle recurrent events yet. So, events starting last year and repeating every week will show up only once: the first event last year.
To improve this, it even turned out that we have to rewrite the iCalendar parser from scratch - which is short before completion. And for syncing to the Mac we have to write calendars - in a way that there is NO data lost. This is very tricky and needs a full implementation of RFC2445. The most complex parts are the management of timezones and recurrence.
I don't know if Safari bookmarks are supposed to x-fer -- but one thing is for sure: they don't.
No, they are not synced.
-- hns
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The calendar sync fails for me when I have repeat events.
These are stored as RRULE: records which is not yet processed as described in the answer to another post.
...
although all day events get extended into the previous day too.
This has two reasons. One is that a full day event is stored as ending at 00:00 of next day. And the Zaurus Calendar shows that...
And the other one is the time-zone which might make events span two days.
We are working on that.
-- hns
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Hello hns,
I have now got Rel 1.5.2 installed and "working" for my SL5600 as per the User manual. However, it is quite slow (lots of spinning beach balls) and does seem to slow the iBook right down when trying to open other apps. The good news is that it does sync but misses some calendar appointments. The Log window looks very similar to the sample in the User manual, it just that it takes 6-7mins to get the sync done. Is this normal? (less than 100 names and only 3 weeks of ICal appointments.
PS: On another matter, I managed to blow away all my original Zaurus Address info when first experimenting. No big loss, as I have it backed up on a USB HDD, but need a get a Wintel PC to reload the info again. In order to avoid this, is there any way I can see the raw address files in the Z? i.e via the command line? Where can I get information of the formating of the Zaurus user data?
BR,
Ian
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Ianwj,
However, it is quite slow (lots of spinning beach balls) and does seem to slow the iBook right down when trying to open other apps. The good news is that it does sync but misses some calendar appointments. The Log window looks very similar to the sample in the User manual, it just that it takes 6-7mins to get the sync done. Is this normal? (less than 100 names and only 3 weeks of ICal appointments.
It should be a little faster. Less than 1 minute for 100 entries. What I suspect is - especially as you are telling that it slows down the Mac - is that some process is keeping hanging around and wastes CPU time.
PS: On another matter, I managed to blow away all my original Zaurus Address info when first experimenting. No big loss, as I have it backed up on a USB HDD, but need a get a Wintel PC to reload the info again. In order to avoid this, is there any way I can see the raw address files in the Z? i.e via the command line? Where can I get information of the formating of the Zaurus user data?
The raw data format of the Zaurus address files as stored in the DTM database are documented roughly. I have taken them from the ZUG Wiki where I found two documents - one describes the databse low level API and the other the data fields.
All this is wrapped into the dtm2xml tool that is part of ZMacSync.
If you want to look into a Zaurus backup, I would expect that it is a tar-gzip (tgz) file. So, you could try tar tvzf .
Hope this helps,
hns
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works for Cacko only?
how about for OpenZaurus and pdaXrom?
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I had a lot of problems with ZMacSync 1.5.2.
My handheld is a C760 running Cacko Qtopia 1.22 ROM.
My Mac is a Powerbook G4 running OS X 10.3.8.
I installed the USB driver version 0.2.8 and performed the reboot. Then I set up the en2 interface and was able to ssh into my zaurus.
The first problem occurred when I tried to create a Samba connection to the C760 to transfer the zmacsync IPK. However, it wouldn't allow a connection and complained that the username/password was incorrect. However, I was successfully able to ssh in with the username zaurus and no password... so there's got to be some problem there either with OS X or the Z.
So, instead of transferring the file via Samba, I just used sftp to move it over.
Then I tried installing the zmacsync IPK. It said it installed alright, but after closing the Add/Remove Programs program, all of my tabs at the top vanished. All of the icons in the Q menu were missing.
So, I tried a hard reset. It came up with the Cacko splash screen, but after that the screen remained white and nothing else happened.
Fortunately, I didn't have anything important on my Z... that's what my Treo is for. Has anyone else had problems with either the latest OS X version or Cacko 1.22? I'll try it all again this weekend... hopefully it works.
Curt
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I see what happened now. When I tried to install the zmacsync IPK (version 1.5.2) it rewrote all of my directory ownerships under /. So, when I reboot and try to load Qtopia, the zaurus account can't get anywhere. Fortunately, all the files are still there.
When I run a `ls -ltr /` as the zaurus user, I get:
-bash-3.00$ ls -ltr
dr-xr-xr-x 45 0 0 0 Jan 2 1970 proc
drwxr-xr-x 5 0 0 0 Feb 26 2004 root
drwxr-xr-x 1 0 0 214 Dec 21 19:52 usr
lrwxrwxrwx 1 0 0 9 Dec 21 20:34 etc -> /home/etc
drwxr-xr-x 2 0 0 0 Dec 21 20:34 bin
lrwxrwxrwx 1 0 0 16 Dec 21 20:34 var -> /home/system/var
lrwxrwxrwx 1 0 0 12 Dec 21 20:34 tmp -> /dev/shm/tmp
drwxr-xr-x 2 0 0 0 Dec 21 20:34 opt
lrwxrwxrwx 1 0 0 8 Dec 21 20:34 mnt -> /var/mnt
drwxr-xr-x 3 0 0 0 Dec 21 20:34 lib
drwxr-xr-x 2 0 0 0 Dec 21 20:34 sbin
drwxr-xr-x 2 0 0 0 Dec 31 10:47 boot
drwxr-xr-x 5 0 0 8064 Mar 9 23:08 dev
drwx------ 12 0 10513 0 Mar 10 2005 home
I have no idea what group number 10513 is supposed to be as it doesn't exist in /etc/groups.
Did I miss something in the FAQ that would explain this?
Does anyone know why this happened?
Can someone mail me back with the correct directory ownerships so I can restore my system?
Thanks
Curt
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Fortunately, I didn't have anything important on my Z... that's what my Treo is for. Has anyone else had problems with either the latest OS X version or Cacko 1.22? I'll try it all again this weekend... hopefully it works.
Curt
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I did this too a while back.
Not sure about restoring (I just reinstalled cacko rom), but you don't need the zmacsync ipk.
Just install the dtm2xml ipk and you'll be fine.
The zmacsync ipk is just a combination of dtm2xml and the ssh server. Cacko 1.22 already has the ssh component.
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I did this too a while back.
Not sure about restoring (I just reinstalled cacko rom), but you don't need the zmacsync ipk.
Just install the dtm2xml ipk and you'll be fine.
The zmacsync ipk is just a combination of dtm2xml and the ssh server. Cacko 1.22 already has the ssh component.
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I can't restore until I get home since I left my AC adapter there, and I'd rather not do that since the filesystem is still intact. I just need to change the perms on all the files under /.
I did see that FAQ on just installing dtm2xml when I went to the Dsitri.de site. I can't see how that would've caused this problem, though, but it's good to know that tidbit when I try this again.
I probably should've just done the backup like they suggested, eh?
Curt