Re: [coldsync-hackers] Coldsync Client program

["Alex Tronin" <at at urbis dot net>]

I had the following configuration working:
Palm <=  local => HotSync(Windows) <= TCP/IP =>ColdSync(Linux) <= local =>
MySQL <= local => PHP <= TCP/IP => Internet
It worked good enough when used in LAN, when I tried remote ColdSync it was
painfully slow.
One time I tried even this:
Kyocera cell phone <= wireless=> Internet <=>ColdSync(Linux) <=> MySQL <=>
PHP <=> Web
There is now doubt this will work too:
Palm <=  local => ColdSync(Linux) <= TCP/IP =>ColdSync(Linux)
So my experience is that in theory it works, but it is not suitable for real
life - will be slow and unreliable.
Best bet would be to develop proxy-server for local connection - when Palm
tries to sync locally, it pretends it has a local files but in fact grabs
them from remote server. Proxy can speak non-Palm protocol with remote
server for speed and efficiency.
Remote server them can be non-ColdSync too.
In fact, much sync software works this way, and I must admit, beats others
hands down in terms of speed and reliability.
Alex

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Andrew Arensburger" <arensb+CShackers@ooblick.com>
To: <coldsync-hackers@lusars.net>
Sent: Friday, May 28, 2004 11:56 AM
Subject: Re: [coldsync-hackers] Coldsync Client program


> On Fri, 28 May 2004, Marco van Beek wrote:
> > On the workstation would be another Coldsync daemon. This would would be
> > running on a local port / cradle, but it would look up the "primary pc"
> > record in the palm, and set up a network sync directly to the Coldsync
> > Server. In an ideal world, I would be able to drop my PDA into any of
> > the workstation cradles and get a sync, as this would allow for
hotdesking.
>
> Take a look at the "forward" directive in .coldsyncrc . In
> particular, according to the comments in lexer.l,
> forward: *;
> means to forward the connection to wherever the Palm says.
> Presumably the client machine could run coldsync with a
> /usr/local/etc/palms that contains
> *|*|*|*|*|/etc/coldsyncrc.forward-only
>
> and /etc/coldsyncrc.forward-only would contain
>
> pda {
> forward: *;
> }
>
> or something like it.
>
> > What would be really neat is if the client Coldsync daemon could run via
> > SSH and could be set up with private keys stored in a preferences file
> > in the PDA (something similar has been mentioned on this list to improve
> >   the underlying security of the sync process). This means that I could
> > sync from outside my network simply by having an Internet accessible ssh
> > server.
>
> Another possibility would be to have the client connect to the
> server using its own key, not the PDA's.
> That is, if the intent is to have a minimally-"thin" client, that
> merely allows the real server to reach out and use the cradle remotely,
> then the client merely needs to prove to the server that it is a known
> client; the server can deal with figuring out whether the PDA is really
> the one that it claims to be.
> Does this make sense?
>
> > And I guess if the Coldsync client program is written in Perl, there is
> > a good chance it could get ported to other platforms without having a
> > major re-write of the server based code, which means Windows and MacOSX
> > become natural extensions of the system.
>
> I'm not sure how much you'd gain by writing this stuff in Perl.
> For one thing, the existing C code already contains an implementation of a
> bunch of stuff, including the various protocols involved in syncing. IMHO
> it's good thing to continue using this. If the core code changes, you only
> have to fix it in one place, rather than two.
> And AFAIK ColdSync is fairly portable already. Yes, it's
> Unix-centric, but these days MacOS is Unix, so that's okay. That leaves
> Windows as the main non-Unix platform. I don't know how hard it is to port
> software between Windows and Unix, though there are reports of people
> successfully building ColdSync out of the box under Cygwin. I'm not sure
> where this leaves us. I guess it boils down to whether it's easier to
> rewrite the necessary bits in Perl, or to port existing C code to Windows.
> (But FWIW, IMHO spending time on writing portable code is a good
> investment of time.)
>
> -- 
> Andrew Arensburger                      Actually, these _do_ represent the
> arensb@ooblick.com                      opinions of ooblick.com!
>                         Generic Tagline V 6.01
> This message was sent through the coldsync-hackers mailing list.  To
remove
> yourself from this mailing list, send a message to majordomo@thedotin.net
> with the words "unsubscribe coldsync-hackers" in the message body.  For
more
> information on Coldsync, send mail to coldsync-hackers-owner@thedotin.net.
>

This message was sent through the coldsync-hackers mailing list.  To remove
yourself from this mailing list, send a message to majordomo@thedotin.net
with the words "unsubscribe coldsync-hackers" in the message body.  For more
information on Coldsync, send mail to coldsync-hackers-owner@thedotin.net.