EpocSync misbehaviour with new 7book

[Ian Colvin]

Hi all,
After solving my initial problem of upgrading my series 7 (build 156) to netbook/7book (release 158) with the help of this forum I have enjoyed a wonderful month or so with the 'new' machine. The only other problem I seem to have encountered so far is with EpocSync.

This marvellous piece of software that lets you synchronise a folder and/or files between two Epoc R5 machines has worked perfectly for me for two years (synching the 7 with a 5mx and occasionally a 5), but is now dropping connections mid-way through the synchronisation process and complaining of 'e-sock panics'. I understand from the author that others who have upgraded may have had the same (or similar?) problems. Can anyone confirm this and (if possible) suggest ways to solve the problem or work around it? I am very much missing the program!

Here are the full symptoms:

Recently I have acquired a netbook personality module with which I upgraded my series 7 to a netbook running OS version 1.05(450) release 158 (I don't know if this might be relevant). I reinstalled EpocSync and since then I have had a few successful syncs, but the majority seem to be interrupted with the following error message on the netbook:

error: Program closed
Program EpocSync
Reason code eSock panic
Reason number 14



The series 5mx (OS version 1.05(260)) then asks me to press ctrl+esc on the other machine and re-run the program. Usually this failure occurs after the synchronising of my contacts and agenda files and either at the start of or during the transfer of timestamps for filematching between a folder in the 5mx C:/EpocSync and the Netbook C:/Documents/SyncingDocuments.

Thank you all for your suggestions, and for the thriving PsionPlace community.
Best regards,
Ian

[pthwaite]

I have a 5mx and netbook and have used Epocsync to regulary keep the two in sync. I fairly regularly get the same message and teh only way then have to "fix" it is to switch off both machines and start again. That always works. Just by re-starting teh programme on teh two devices doesn't always appear to work for some reason.

[Ian Colvin]

pthwaite,
Thanks for your reply. I had thought this problem must be related to the 7book, but am I right in thinking yours is an unmodified netbook? My S7 never had this problem so I am assuming it must in some way be related to the upgrade or the netbook OS.

It is very handy to hear how common this problem is. Have other people encountered it or are we just unlucky? Has anyone got EpocSync running on a netbook or 7book with no problems at all?

Best regards,
Ian

[Ian Colvin]

Sorry, I meant to add, that in my case switching the two machines off does not *always* work. In fact I would say it works less often than it fails. So far I've been unable to determine a pattern between success and failure.

Anyway thank you, everyone, for reading this.
Ian

[diem]

Yes, I'm afraid I regularly saw this error when using EpocSync between my standard netBook and 5mx. I contacted the author, who seemed to think that it would be more likely when trying to sync a deep folder tree, but he couldn't trace the bug.

I'm afraid I sadly had to give up using the software because of this bug :(

[Ian Colvin]

Yan,
Thank you for this contribution. Actually, it has reminded me that when I installed the netbook system I also reorganised my files and put my synching folder into the documents folder instead of leaving it at root as it had been (it was an attempt at tidying up my sprawling files). I wonder if this, and not the netbook upgrade caused the problem. I shall investigate and report back.
Best regards,
Ian
PS pthwaite, is your synching folder at root or might it be part of a deeper folder tree?

[Ian Colvin]

Hi,
I moved the folder with all my syncing docs back to root and EpocSync seems to have behaved impeccably. Obviously as it was an intermittent fault, it is possible that this was just lucky, but I'll give it a day or two to check, and hopefully this means that the solution is to put the syncing documents folder at root. I wonder if this would help any of the others who have had a problem?
In any case, many thanks to pthwaite and Yan for your suggestions. Solving problems is always so much easier with 3 heads!
Best regards,
Ian

[diem]

Sorry to pour cold water Ian, but I always used to sync C:\Documents on one machine to the same location on the other, so I don't think the sync folder being in the root is a complete solution. Since this problem is only reported with netBooks & 7Books (and I would guess MalayBooks), I would suggest one or both of these factors:
- processor speed. The upgrade from 7 to netBook ups the processor clock rate from 110 to 190MHz.
- change in the protocol stack. Since the netBook supports ethernet, and both this and infrared are accessed via the 'sockets' protocol, I would suggest changes in this code might have an effect.

[pthwaite]

Well I've had a look and in both the 5 and the netbook (it is an unmodified one) the sync folder is in the root. One I've called Epocsync, the other (on the 5) is Sync.
I sync both the agenda and contacts programs and a variety of other files. It doesn't always crash at the contacts point but is most likely....

[Ian Colvin]

Ok. This is interesting. Could it be the matter of converting between two differently named folders then? Or a combination of two differently named folders and a deep folder tree? My old syncing folders on the S7 were at root and were both named 'EpocSync'. When I upgraded to the 7book I reorganised my files there into the C:/Documents/SyncingDocs folder and synched between the two. This is when I started having intermittent problems. Now I have moved the folder back to root and renamed it 'EpocSync'. So far no problems encountered, but I'll see what happens over the next few days and get back to you.
Thanks again for all your input. I hope this may be of help to others.
Best regards,
Ian

[Ian Colvin]

I'm an idiot. Turns out that I hadn't set up the new sync to sync folders within folders, so it wasn't failing because it wasn't trying to sync the whole folder tree. When I turned that option on it failed.
However, when I then ran the same sync setup using the 5mx as primary and the netbook as secondary it *did* sync properly without crashing. So perhaps Yan was right about it being related to the speed increase on the netbook. But then I *guess* that you have all tried this as a solution already, so perhaps I was just lucky. I'll give it another day or so and report back.
Thanks for all your help.
Ian

[Ian Colvin]

Several days now of happily syncing between the 5mx and the 7book and the problem seems to have entirely disappeared. The solution seems to have been to use the 5mx as the primary and the 7book as the secondary machine in EpocSync. I did before trying this also move my syncing folder to root and ensured it had the same name on both machines. Whether this had any relevance I'm not sure (it didn't in any case solve the problem when I used 7book as the primary).
Would anyone else like to try to see if this solves their problem and report back?
Thank you to everyone who stopped by to read this thread, and especially to Yan and pthwaite, who helped me get my EpocSync working again.
Best regards,
Ian :D

[diem]

Glad to help Ian,

I may use it again myself now! :D

[pthwaite]

Hmm, I haven't tried syncing with the 5 as the primary I always sync with my Netbook as primary. However as it missbehaves relatively infrequently I'm not too bothered, but it is useful to know.:)