Conduits are (possibly third party) programs that synchronize your Pilot with various applications. KPilot 3.2.1 comes with four conduits. Before a conduit can be used, it must be installed on your system and it must be enabled in KPilot as a conduit.
Installing KPilot's standard conduits on your system is done by installing KPilot. Other conduits will have to be installed according to the instructions given with those conduits.
Enabling conduits in KPilot requires you to choose Conduits->External from the menu. This will bring up the External Conduit Setup dialog. This dialog consists of two lists: on the left is the list of conduits that are available; on the right is the list of conduits that are enabled. To enable a conduit, click on it in the left-hand column and click on the enable button. The conduit whill be moved to the right-hand column. To disable a conduit -- for example when you do not want to sync with a particular application for a while or are having trouble with the conduit -- select the conduit in the right-hand list and click on the disable button.
The Conduit Setup Dialog
A conduit that is enabled can be configured by selecting the conduit in the right-hand list and clicking on setup. This will bring up the setup dialog for the external conduit. The sections below describe the setup dialog for the four standard KPilot conduits.
Clicking on done or cancel saves or discards your selection of which conduits are enabled (i.e. if you enable a conduit and click cancel, the conduit will remain disabled). Clicking cancel does not cancel any changes you may have made to the configuration of the external conduit.
This conduit doesn't really do anything. It is provided mostly as a programming example. You can configure the Null conduit with a log message, but because the Null conduit is never run during a hot sync, this has no effect.
The Null Conduit Setup Dialog
Clicking on the OK saves the log message you have entered; clicking on cancel discards any changes you may have made. The about tab tells you about the authors of the Null conduit. All conduits have such a tab to assist you in reporting a bug or requesting a feature.
About Null Conduit
Note that even though the Null Conduit about tab says you can attach the Null Conduit to databases, there is no provision for you to do so.
This conduit allows you to send and receive email. The first page of the Mail conduit setup dialog controls what parts of the other pages can be filled in.
Mail Conduit General Setup
On this setup page you can select one method for sending mail and one method for receiving mail. Both sending and receiving can be disabled by selecting the appropriate radio button.
When sending mail via sendmail (i.e. the Use Sendmail radio button is selected on the General setup page) the fields relevant for sendmail are enabled.
Mail Conduit Send Setup
It is possible to let KPilot talk directly to an SMTP server instead of using sendmail. This can be useful if your installation does not have sendmail or you wish to avoid the overhead sendmail involves. In these cases, select the radio button Use SMTP on the General Setup page and fill in the fields for the SMTP server.
Mail Conduit Send Setup
How you receive mail is also controlled by the General Setup page for the Mail conduit. If you select Use POP3 server you will have to configure your POP3 server on the POP page. If you select Use UNIX Mailbox you will have to configure the UNIX mailbox and you can ignore the POP3 configuration.
Mail Conduit POP3 Setup
Enter the host name or IP number of your POP3 server in the POP server field. Enter the port number in the POP port field. This is almost always 110, but if you are trying to circumvent a firewall it may be different. The username your use for the POP server should be entered in the POP username field. This varies -- consult your system administrator. Common variations are yourlogin and yourlogin@yourdomain.
The mail conduit will delete mail from the POP server unless you check the Leave mail on server checkbox. If you also use other applications to read mail from the same source, it is a good idea to leave this box checked.
Using the POP3 server requires a password. Normally, the mail conduit will ask you for your password every time you do a hot-sync, so that it can connect to the POP3 server. If this bothers you, you can check the box Save Pop password and enter your password in the Pop Password: field (your password will not be displayed). Then you will not be asked for your password again. Note that your password is stored as plain text in the mail conduit's configuration. This is a potential security hole, but the mail conduit ensures that the configuration file is readable only by you.
Mail Conduit Mailbox Setup
To set up your UNIX mailbox for the mail conduit you must enter the filename of your UNIX system mailbox. On most systems this is /var/spool/mail/yourlogin. You can enter the filename directly into the UNIX Mailbox field or you can use the Browse button to look for the file.
These two conduits will synchronize your Pilot with KOrganizer. One conduit synchronises the date book (calendar) and the other synchronises the todo-list. This means you can enable none, one or both conduits depending on what you want to synchronize between the Pilot and KOrganizer.
The setup dialogs for both conduits are almost identical. They require the filename of the calendar / todo-list to synchronize with. You can enter the name of the file in the text box or search for the file by clicking on the browse button.
Calendar and Todo Conduit
You need to have a calendar file to synchronize with. Therefore, before you attempt to configure the calendar or todo-list conduit, make sure you have a calendar file. If you have not used KOrganizer yet, you need to create a calendar file. To do this, start KOrganizer and select File->Save. Enter a filename to save the (empty) calendar. Enter the filename in the conduit setup dialog. The filename will typically be /home/yourname/.kde/apps/korganizer/file.vcs.