Syncing a Bluetooth phone with a Linux box

That syncing feeling

I once killed a phone by dropping it in a swimming pool, and that taught me the hard way that data backup isn’t just for PCs and servers. Contact syncing has been a must-have feature for me since then, and it comes in handy when you upgrade – eliminating the need to manually transfer your contacts across.

Linux has had a few syncronisation frameworks over the years, but OpenSync seems to be the leader today. Like many other core components, OpenSync itself is desktop-agnostic. Its device and application support comes from plug-ins, so you’ll find plug-ins for PDAs and mobile phones, as well as for Evolution, Sunbird, and the KDE PIM tools.


Multisync-gui is a bit rough at the moment, but it does the job.

OpenSync in Gutsy is quite out-of-date, though the upcoming 0.40 release of OpenSync will hopefully be completed in time for the next version of Ubuntu. I opted to use packages of the latest stable version, 0.22. The packages I used were actually built for Ubuntu Feisty, but they install and work without problems on Gutsy. Here are the repository details, which I added to my “/etc/apt/sources.list” file before running “sudo apt-get update”:
deb http://opensync.gforge.punktart.de/repo/opensync-0.21/ feisty main

Next, I installed the required packages:
sudo apt-get install multisync-gui msynctool libopensync-plugin-syncml libopensync-plugin-evolution2

OpenSync uses synchronisation groups, to which you add the desired plug-ins. I followed these steps to create the setup for my device, using the “Multisync-gui” tool from the Applications/Accessories menu:

1) Click “Add” to create a new group – I called mine “evo2-6110”

2) Click “Edit” to open the group

3) Click “Add Member”, select “Evolution 2.x” plug-in, and Apply

4) Click “Add Member” again and add “SyncML over OBEX Client” – like most modern phones, the 6110 uses the XML-based SyncML protocol

I didn’t need to configure the Evolution plug-in, since it just needs to be told which of your addressbooks, calendars, and so on, to sync with, and I’m just using the single default store in each case. The SyncML plug-in needed configuring, and unfortunately there’s no GUI dialog for that: Multisync-gui just embeds a text editor that lets you edit the plug-in’s XML configuration. Here’s the configuration for my 6110:

00:1B:AF:5E:CF:3D
10
PC Suite
1
1
2
1
0
10000
0
Contacts
Calendar
Notes