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

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

TLUG,

After Scott's last message, I started playing around with my Palm Pilot 
(Palm TX), and see if anything has changed since Ubuntu Dapper went 
"official".

Well, it hasn't changed in that it still doesn't work. But I noticed 
something that should be a pretty big clue.

First I did this, and pressed "sync" on the Palm Pilot:

dave@example.com:/usr$ tail -f /var/log/messages
Jul 22 19:03:14 localhost kernel: [17187591.264000] usb 2-1.1: new full 
speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 41
Jul 22 19:03:14 localhost kernel: [17187591.376000] visor 2-1.1:1.0: 
Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter detected
Jul 22 19:03:14 localhost kernel: [17187591.376000] usb 2-1.1: 
Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter now attached to ttyUSB0
Jul 22 19:03:14 localhost kernel: [17187591.376000] usb 2-1.1: 
Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter now attached to ttyUSB1
Jul 22 19:05:49 localhost kernel: [17187746.504000] Unknown OutputIN= 
OUT=vmnet8 SRC=172.16.141.1 DST=172.16.141.255 LEN=78 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 
TTL=64 ID=0 DF PROTO=UDP SPT=137 DPT=137 LEN=58
Jul 22 19:05:49 localhost kernel: [17187746.504000] Unknown OutputIN= 
OUT=vmnet1 SRC=192.168.140.1 DST=192.168.140.255 LEN=78 TOS=0x00 
PREC=0x00 TTL=64 ID=0 DF PROTO=UDP SPT=137 DPT=137 LEN=58
Jul 22 19:06:03 localhost kernel: [17187760.520000] usb 2-1.1: USB 
disconnect, address 41


So it looks like my Palm is connected, right? And then when the sync 
timed out, it disconnected.

But here's the thing. In the two minutes where the Palm is connected, I 
went over to /dev and looked for ttyUSB0 and ttyUSB1:

dave@example.com:/dev$ ls ttyUSB*
ls: ttyUSB*: No such file or directory

So question number one is, why is /var/log/messages showing that the 
Palm is connected on ttyUSB0 when they aren't in dev?

I thought maybe ttyUSB0 and ttyUSB1 might be somewhere else, but I can't 
locate them because they only exist when the Palm is connected, so 
"locate" won't see them.

While this was going on, I noticed there was a file in /dev called 
"pilot". It was red text on a black background, which didn't look 
healthy. So I looked at it more closely:

dave@example.com:/dev$ ls -l pilot
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 5 2006-07-22 18:59 pilot -> pilot

If I read that right, it's a symbolic link to itself. That just can't be 
good. So, I deleted it.

And, next time when I hit sync on the Palm again, it came back.

So, question two is, who would be creating a symbolic link from pilot to 
itself in /dev?

--
Dave M G