Re: [tlug] I'm a glutton for punishment - Palm Pilot and Ubuntu Dapper LTS connectivity

[Dave M G <martin@example.com>]

TLUG,

So this morning I went and bought a nifty little Bluetooth dongle that 
connects via USB. Now I'm attempting to connect my Palm Pilot and my PC.

The good news is that the Bluetooth device seems to have automagically 
been detected and is working. I was even able to make a query from my PC 
to my Palm and retrieve my Palm user name:

dave@example.com:/etc/bluetooth$ hcitool scan
Scanning ...
       00:70:E0:AB:29:CF       Dave

Sweet.

On the downside, the instructions on this site:
http://howto.pilot-link.org/bluesync/index.html
... differ from my situation.

The main difference is that the Palm interface screens used as examples 
do not have the same options and menus as my Palm interface does. I 
think that the web site might be using a slightly earlier version of 
Palm OS than what I have.

I attempted to follow the instructions as best I could though, and along 
the way was able to see my home computer from my Palm and vice versa. 
Very encouraging.

When it came down to an actual hotsync, the instructions diverged enough 
that I started to get into dark waters.

But the Palm Pilot itself has a built in wizard for establishing a 
connection. So I'm stepping through it, and it says:
"Virtual Serial Port
To use Bluetooth HotSync, you must create a virtual serial port on your 
PC. Follow the instructions that came with your PC's Bluetooth. After 
you have created the virtual serial port on your PC, tap Next"

Makes sense. Gnome Pilot et al will need to know where to look.

Okay... so of course first thing I do is hit the web trail in search of 
how to make a virtual serial port for my Bluetooth connection.

And you can guess how successful I was by the fact that I'm posting 
here. I kind of assumed this would be a udev thing, kind of like how the 
USB was set to connect to ttyUSB. But regardless of my assumptions, I'm 
not finding what I'm after.

I've found sites which talk a lot about connecting a mobile phone via 
Bluetooth, but they talk about a Bluetooth serial port as if it were a 
hardware device. Or so it seems. I think I'm getting lost in the 
terminology.

So, today's question:

How do I create a virtual serial connection for my Bluetooth device?

--
Dave M G