iPhone-uSync

iPhone-uSync is a handy tool for automated wireless syncing with your Apple iPhone. It's mainly designed for Linux and BSD users, allowing you to sync your iPhone wirelessly without the hassle. Basically, it’s just a couple of shell scripts working together like a mini client-server setup.

Features of iPhone-uSync

This software has some cool features:

• Start syncing right from your phone.


• Get alerts for new music or podcasts while you're away from your computer.


• You can choose between fully automatic or manual syncing modes.

Requirements:

To get started, you’ll need a few things:

1. SSH access: You need seamless SSH connection to and from your phone to the uSync server. Make sure you're using public key authentication instead of passwords. This step is super important!


2. The BSD Subsystem: Make sure it's installed on your phone. The current version doesn’t include 'du', so you’ll have to grab it from here. Extract it and copy the binary to /bin on your device, then give it execute permissions.


3. Erica Sadun's utilities: These are needed as well. You can find them in Installer—make sure 'ed' is also installed on the device.


4. GTKPod & libgpod: Keep these up-to-date so that they recognize the iTunes_Control directory correctly.


5. GNUPod SVN revision: Download and tweak this one too, changing any instance of 'iPod_Control' to 'iTunes_Control'. Run this command in the source directory: "/path/to/source$ for FILE in $(find ./) ; do sed --in-place s:'iPod_Control':'iTunes_Control':g ${FILE} ; done"

Your Setup Guide

Create a folder for uSync-Server in your user directory (like /home/me/.uSync-Server). Then, set up the configuration files according to your setup. Make sure uSync-Server.conf has all the right info filled out!

You can now launch GTKPod and set up a new repository for your iPhone. When everything’s ready, fire up uSync from the iPhone! It will ask you for some basic info like username@IPAddress of your computer and where you placed the uSync-Server folder.

Smoothing Out Syncing Issues

If everything works well, you'll see a prompt asking if you'd like to sync! If not, double-check that all details are correct and that SSH works smoothly between devices.

The cool part? The first time you connect, it will automatically grab all music/videos from your phone because uSync operates on a local copy stored in LocaliPhone dir. Once you're done adding stuff through GTKPod, it'll sync back!

Troubleshooting Tips

If at any point you disrupt syncing (like disconnecting), just fix any lockfile issues by removing "Locked" content from sync_lock file located at /Applications/uSync.app/sync_lock