Palm or Serial Port? How do I get this ---- thing to work?

[kuit]

I've installed mandrake 7 on my 233 dell. Everything works GREAT. Except my serial port. I can't seem to get my Palm to Sync with the PC. I've tried all the Com ports but nothing. How do I figure out if the serial port is the prob? And if it is, how do I fix it? Any help would be highly appreciated. Syncing my palm is a must for me.

Thanks,
Kuit

[posterboy]

It's a must for me, too. I am using Gnome, but had success long ago with CLI tools, also. Only thing I can think of, did you make a /dev pointer to the right port named "pilot"? Without that, nothing. HTH, Ray

[kuit]

Yea. It says "can't find your port". This is really bugging me.

Thanks,
Kuit

[navy-linux]

I have not tried my palm under linux yet, but this problem is simular to the one Ihad under windows.
The bios had the serial port set to auto config. I changed it to hard settings, IRQ, and IO settings, and it worked fine then. I have an Asus K7M motherboard. Not sure if other motherboards are set up this way or not, but give it a try.

[Stoofer]

Hi,

I have an m105 (palm) with a serial cradle. I am running mandrake 8.1. (kt3 ultra 2 athlon xp2k) I have read quite a few docs about this sort of stuff and I think my problem my be like yours, apparently exceptional.

It goes like this. Mandrake 8.1 creates /dev/pilot and then a link from /dev/ttys0, (which is the software outlet for the first serial port) - (with tool ln) to /dev/pilot I have made sure the link is there by checking with ls, and I have made sure that the user (me) has priviledges with chmod 770 (I think it is or 777 - which ever one I copied off the docs - possibly 640 even). still cannot get k-pilot and the cradle (yes with m105!!) to sync. Ithink that k-pilot recognises /dev/pilot (cos that is where it is looking in the settings) but doesn't get anything.

I am getting abit panicked cos tha batteries are going to run out soon, and all my lovely precious data will be destroyed. Is there an onboard clock battery (on the m105) that maintains memory while you swap batteries?

I think that there is such a thing as activating the serial ports in both the bios and also in linux. Like can you deactivate a serial port so that no-one can plug something in and then get control of your machine?

I have wandered through the bios and changed serial port one to 3x8/com1 from auto, and that has not acheived anything. I think Linux needs to know that I intend to use com1/ttyS0.

The sixty four million dollar question I pose to the justlinux board is this:- how do I activate my serial ports in linux (assuming I'm not barking up the wrong tree - and if I am can you put me out of my misery!)?

So what happens? Is there a serial port ingnoring function?

Chris

[Elijah]

have you tried adding yourself to dialout?

ex. #addgroup elijah dialout


I use jpilot btw....

[iGuy]

I am having the same problem -- but I doubt it is the serial port. I agree it lies in configuring /dev/pilot; but mine is on a USB connection and ttyS0 is my modem (I'm on an imac).

If you know what tty is running xinit, you can try looking into the error codes generated when you try to sync using something like kpilot. (As of yet if do not know what an error like kpilot aborted error 518 means ... but it is a start.)

I think it will lie in the assignment of /dev/pilot -- and is probably something so simple, I will feel stupid when I find out.

[Trd79]

Don't worry Stoofer,

If you whip those old batteries out, and stick in some nice new ones, none of your lovely data will be lost.

Just don't wait too long.......

[iGuy]

Sucess:

I tried the sync; nothing happened. Checked logs to see what device complained [ttyUSB1] linked -s /dev/ttyUSB1 to /dev/pilot. Still nothing. then I chmod 666 /dev/ttyUSB1 : that did it.

I imagine it will be about the same on a serial port [e.g. ttySO1...]