KPsion"> ]> Fritz Elfert

felfert@to.com

2001 Fritz Elfert &FDLNotice; __DATE__ __VERSION__ &kpsion; is an application for handling backup, restore and formatting of Psion PDAs. KDE plptools KPsion Psion EPOC PDA backup restore format Welcome to &kpsion;! &kpsion; is an application handling backup, restore and formatting of Psion PDAs for the K Desktop Environment. It uses the daemon ncpd and the libraries from the plptools package. This program is meant to be started from the command line or from .desktop files. &kpsion; is part of the plptools package. The plptools package is available at http://plptools.sourceforge.net/. The plptools package is not focussed on KDE application. Therefore, to enable the build of KDE related stuff (&kpsion; is part of that) you have to use the option --enable-kde when running plptools configure. The build process usual works like this: $ ./configure --enable-kde $ make $ make install You will have to execute the last step as root. The installation process needs to be able to write to the system wide KDE directories. Usage of &kpsion; is easy. Normally, you start &kpsion; using the menu entry in the Utilities section of the K-Menu. You also can start kpsion from the shell. The syntax is one of the following: kpsion kpsion --autobackup kpsion --backup DRIVE kpsion --restore DRIVE kpsion --format DRIVE If started without any options, &kpsion; starts up in interactive mode. If started with any of the above options, &kpsion; performs the given task non interactively. --autobackup This specifies to run a scheduled backup of the connected Psion. If no psion is connected, nothing happens. --backup DRIVE This option starts backup of the specified DRIVE. DRIVE is a single drive letter. --restore DRIVE This option starts restore of the specified DRIVE. DRIVE is a single drive letter. --format DRIVE This option starts format of the specified DRIVE. DRIVE is a single drive letter. &kpsion; mainwindow. &kpsion; mainwindow When a Psion PDA is connected, the main window shows its drives in the central icon view. By clicking on a drive-icon, you can toggle its selection. If any drive is selected, the entries in the File menu and the toolbar buttons are enabled. The most common actions are accessible via toolbar buttons. These are: Full backup. Restore. Ctrlb File Start Full Backup Starts a full backup of selected drives. Ctrli File Start Incremental Backup Starts an incremental backup of selected drives. Ctrlr File Start Restore Starts restore of selected drives. Ctrlf File Start Format Starts formatting of selected drives. Ctrlq File Quit Quits &kpsion;. When you start &kpsion; the first time, a wizard dialog is shown which lets you easily configure the application for your personal use. The initial setup is divided into three steps: Step one. Select a backup directory. Selecting the backup directory The backup directory will be used by &kpsion; for storing backup archives. You simply can accept the default proposed by this dialog if you don't have to care about disk space used in your home directory. Otherwise, select a directory of your choice by clicking on the Browse button. &kpsion; creates a that directory if it does not yet exist. Of course, you need the permission to do so. Step two. backup strategy. Setting the backup strategy In the second step, you can adjust the backup strategy. For both, incremental and full backups, you can select an interval. If any of these intervals is enabled, &kpsion; will create a .desktop Entry in your KDE Autostart folder. Every time KDE is started, this will start &kpsion; in autobackup mode. If the interval is expired and your Psion is currently connected, an unattended backup will be performed. The third adjustment to be made is the number of backup generations to keep. A backup generation consists of a full backup plus eventually made incremental backups. If a backup is completed sucessfully, &kpsion; will check, if there are more backup generations available and delete older backup generations. Step three. connection parameters. Setting connection parameters In the third step, you can adjust the behavior of &kpsion; during initial connect. If you set the connection retry interval to a non-zero value, &kpsion; will retry a connection attempt if it had failed. Since &kpsion; needs the ncpd daemon running, it is also possible to start this daemon on the fly if it is not running. For this, you need to have permissions to use the specified port. When &kpsion; connects to a Psion, it retrieves the PDA's unique machine ID and verifies, if this PDA has been connected before. If the connected Psion has never been connected to &kpsion; before, a wizard dialog is shown which lets you assign a name for that Psion and specify a set of drives which should be backed up when running in unattended backup mode. Step one. psion name. Setting a psion name The name of the new Psion is not used by &kpsion; internally but is used for displaying the machine's name when connected. Step two. specifying backup drives. Specifying backup drives Usually, you should select all drives except the ROM drive. The ROM drive can be backed up, but - of course - can not be restored. All settings, configured using the First time wizard and New Psion wizard can be changed at any time using the Settings dialog. The Settings dialog consists of three tabs: Setup, Backup. Settings, Backup Settings, Connection. Settings, Connection Settings, Machines. Settings, Machines The backup files, created by &kpsion; are simply gzipped tar files. The files follow the following naming scheme: TYPE-YYYY-MO-DD-HH-MI-SS.tar.gz where TYPE is a single character, representing the backup type. 'I' stands for incremental and 'F' stands for full. YYYY is the year of creation. MO is the month of creation. DD is the day of creation. HH is the hour of creation. MI is the minute of creation. SS is the second of creation. The file names in the tar archives are converted to fit into general naming scheme. All occurences of the character '%' are changed into the string '%25', all ocurrences of '/' are changed into '%2f' and all occurences of '\' are changed into '/'. In addition to the data files on the psion, every archive contains a special index file, where the original file attributes and the Psion's 64-bit hires filetime is stored. This file is named KPsionIncrementalIndex for incremental backups or KPsionFullIndex for full backups. The index file is stored in the archive's toplevel directory and is an ASCII file, containing one line per data file with the following fields: hhhhhhhh llllllll ssssssss aaaaaaaa fn where hhhhhhhh is an 8-digit hexadecimal number, representing the upper half of the file's modification time. llllllll is an 8-digit hexadecimal number, representing the lower half of the file's modification time. ssssssss is an 8-digit hexadecimal number, representing the size of the file. aaaaaaaa is an 8-digit hexadecimal number, representing the native attributes of the file. fn is the unconverted original absolute file name. The first line of the index file contains a header of the following format: #plpbackup index T where T is a single character, representing the backup type. 'I' stands for incremental and 'F' stands for full. &reporting.bugs; I have a Psion Series 3 and &kpsion; doesn't work. This is currently a known problem with the plptools lib. You have to wait until tis is fixed. Sorry. Copyright 2001 Fritz Elfert &kpsion; is written by Fritz Elfert. The author can be reached through email at felfert@to.com. Please report any bugs you find to me so that I can fix them. If you have a suggestion, feel free to contact me. &underFDL; &underGPL;