Daemons

If you're using SynCE 0.12 in a recent distribution you're probably using synce-hal, in which case you can skip straight to "Plug in"

If you know you need odccm, then keep reading:

To start the connection between device and computer, you need to start the daemon that communicates between the two. If you have installed SynCE from packages, then you don't need to bother with this step as the daemon will already be running.

If you did not install SynCE from packages, please start odccm with

$ sudo odccm -f

The -f will keep odccm running in the foreground, printing information to the terminal.

Plug in

Now you can plug in your device.

After you plugged in the device, you should see the following lines (some values may be different though) appear in odccm:

** (process:15855): DEBUG: PDA network interface discovered! udi='/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/net_80_00_60_0f_e8_00'
** (process:15855): DEBUG: device_info_received
** (process:15855): DEBUG: 94 e4 62 9b 2c 11 db a6 39 e4 73 9a 34 55 91 00 05 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 0b 00 00 00 48 00 54 00 43 00 5f 00 54 00 79 00 54 00 4e 00 5f 00 49 00 49 00 00 00 05 02 54 06 11 0a 00 00 05 00 00 00 d3 77 79 79 00 00 00 00 0f 00 00 00 50 6f 63 6b 65 74 50 43 00 53 53 44 4b 00 00 06 00 00 00 4b 61 69 73 65 72 00 02 00 00 00 05 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 05 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 0c 00 00 00 5d 00 00 00 01 00 00 00

If you see something similar to the above lines, odccm at least is working correctly and you can go the the Connected part below.

Troubleshooting

If odccm only shows only one line like:

** (process:15855): DEBUG: PDA network interface discovered! udi='/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/net_80_00_60_0f_e8_00'

and you have a Motorola Q device there could be some issues with the device deviating from the standard IP addresses for the device and the computer.

You can instruct odccm to use correct values for the Motorola Q device by starting up odccm as follows:

sudo odccm -f --device-ip 169.254.2.118 --local-ip 169.254.2.117 --local-netmask 255.255.255.252

After this you can reconnect your phone and you should see the extra device_info_received and the hex-number lines being printed by odccm.

If you get no output from odccm, check whether the ipaq module is connecting to your device:

dmesg

will give output like:

ipaq 3-1:1.0: PocketPC PDA converter detected

Check whether the ipaq module is running with

lsmod | grep ipaq

Make sure the ipaq module is blacklisted to make sure it is not started at boot, and stop it (if currently running) with

rmmod ipaq

Connected

Note: if you have a password-protected Window Mobile 5 device, you should follow SynceTools/SynceGnome for instructions on allowing a password entry to appear. For password-protected Window Mobile 6 devices, you need unlock the device by following the instructions as shown on the device. If you do have a locked device, you must unlock it before you can go furher now.

Your device is now connected. You can verify the connection easily by using the SynCE tool pls, which lists remote directory contents much like ls.

$ pls
Directory               2006-03-01 11:00:16  My Pictures/
Directory               2006-03-01 11:00:20  My Music/
Directory               2006-03-01 11:00:20  My Videos/
Directory               2006-03-01 11:00:20  UAContents/
Directory               2006-03-01 11:00:22  My Midlets/
Directory               2006-03-01 11:01:18  Frames/
Directory               2006-06-20 23:41:24  Notes/

Troubleshooting

If you don't see an output like the above, but instead an error message like "No devices connected to odccm", then there a few things you can check:

Do you have NetworkManager running? If so, disable that for any RNDIS devices; see how it can be done at StopNetworkManagerInterfering.
Do you have a firewall running? Make sure it is not blocking connections from the phone on port 990.

Now connect the phone again and try running pls again.

If it still is not working, you can request help by using the synce-users mailing list (SynceMailingLists) or on IRC (SynceChat).

Where now?

SynceInstallation provides instructions on installing other useful tools for SynCE, such as synchronization. SynceTools outlines other basic command line tools provided.