gpsd not autodetecting Pharos GPS-500

[Walter_Wittel]

Binary package hint: gpsd

On Lucid (fully patched as of today) I installed gpsd and left the default /etc/default/gpsd config but xgps gets no data.

I could see the device showing up as "usb 2-2: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0" in kern.log so I ran "dpkg-reconfigure gpsd" to add /dev/ttyUSB0 to the DEVICES line and xgps could now get a fix. The Pharos GPS-500 is an SiRF device (don't know more about it - this one came with Microsoft Streets & Trips.

Another perhaps related problem is that if I unplug / replug the device, even if it associates with the same ttyUSB0 device gpsd doesn't supply data to xgps unless I "sudo /etc/init.d/gpsd restart", which always seems to reconnect to the device. Restarting xgps doesn't seem to help. So apparently gpsd needs a kick even when the device is in the config file.

BTW, I never got this device to auto-detect in Jaunty either, so this is likely not a regression. No idea if this is device specific or not as the only other GPS receiver I have is the older Pharos GPS-360 which has the same problem.

Don't believe this is related but running on an Asus eeepc 901.

Please let me know if I can provide additional information. Thanks!

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Feb 6 13:52:07 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Alpha i386 (20100113)
Package: gpsd 2.39-8ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-12.17-generic
SourcePackage: gpsd
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-12-generic i686

[Bernd Zeimetz (bzed)]

Hi,

please tell me the vendor and product id as reported in sysfs. In case you don't
know what to do exactly, just plug the device in your computer and run

udevadm info -a -p $(udevadm info -q path -n /dev/ttyUSB0)

and send the output to this bugreport.

Thanks and cheers,

Bernd

Walter_Wittel wrote:
> Public bug reported:
>
> Binary package hint: gpsd
>
> On Lucid (fully patched as of today) I installed gpsd and left the
> default /etc/default/gpsd config but xgps gets no data.
>
> I could see the device showing up as "usb 2-2: pl2303 converter now
> attached to ttyUSB0" in kern.log so I ran "dpkg-reconfigure gpsd" to add
> /dev/ttyUSB0 to the DEVICES line and xgps could now get a fix. The
> Pharos GPS-500 is an SiRF device (don't know more about it - this one
> came with Microsoft Streets & Trips.
>
> Another perhaps related problem is that if I unplug / replug the device,
> even if it associates with the same ttyUSB0 device gpsd doesn't supply
> data to xgps unless I "sudo /etc/init.d/gpsd restart", which always
> seems to reconnect to the device. Restarting xgps doesn't seem to help.
> So apparently gpsd needs a kick even when the device is in the config
> file.
>
> BTW, I never got this device to auto-detect in Jaunty either, so this is
> likely not a regression. No idea if this is device specific or not as
> the only other GPS receiver I have is the older Pharos GPS-360 which has
> the same problem.
>
> Don't believe this is related but running on an Asus eeepc 901.
>
> Please let me know if I can provide additional information. Thanks!
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> Architecture: i386
> Date: Sat Feb 6 13:52:07 2010
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
> InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Alpha i386 (20100113)
> Package: gpsd 2.39-8ubuntu1
> ProcEnviron:
> LANG=en_US.utf8
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-12.17-generic
> SourcePackage: gpsd
> Uname: Linux 2.6.32-12-generic i686
>
> ** Affects: gpsd (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Undecided
> Status: New
>
>
> ** Tags: apport-bug i386 lucid
>

--
 Bernd Zeimetz Debian GNU/Linux Developer
 http://bzed.de http://www.debian.org
 GPG Fingerprints: 06C8 C9A2 EAAD E37E 5B2C BE93 067A AD04 C93B FF79
                   ECA1 E3F2 8E11 2432 D485 DD95 EB36 171A 6FF9 435F

[Walter_Wittel (wittelw)]

Thanks for the clear instructions. I zipped the udevadmin output and also the device from lsusb and attached. I hope this can help.

[Bernd Zeimetz (bzed)]

Fixed in upstream's svn.

gpsd: bzed * r7001 /trunk/gpsd.rules:
gpsd: Support Pharos GPS-500 in udev rules.
gpsd: Launchpad bug #518213, thanks to Walter Wittel for the report.

The fix will be shipped with gpsd 2.91. In the meantime you could add the following rule to udev:

ATTRS{idVendor}=="067b", ATTRS{idProduct}=="aaa0", SYMLINK+="gps%n", RUN+="/lib/udev/gpsd.hotplug.wrapper"

Cheers,

Bernd

[Walter_Wittel (wittelw)]

Bernd, thanks for the quick fix. Unfortunately I may have missed something earlier from not knowing the system well (or perhaps it changed due to lucid updates since yesterday?).

If I add the rule to /etc/udev/rules.d/launchpad-bug-518213.rules then when I plug the device I can see two entries in /dev (ls /dev | grep gps) and even if I add both to the DEVICES line xgps doesn't get any data.

Now that you have pointed me to udev I see these lines in /lib/udev/rules.d/40-gpsd.rules:

# PS-360 OEM (Microsoft GPS sold with Street and Trips 2005)
SYSFS{idVendor}=="067b", SYSFS{idProduct}=="aaa0", SYMLINK="gps%n", RUN+="/lib/udev/gpsd.hotplug.wrapper"

The Pharos GPS-500 also came with a version of Streets & Trips but is a newer version of the hardware (I also have the older GPS-360 which doesn't even work on Vista with the current Microsoft drivers, or else the unit is bad now). I see the USB vendor/product is unchanged between the two units (I confirmed both have same IDs - bad Microsoft / Pharos!). BTW, both Microsoft devices have Pharos on the tag on the back.

So I think the change should be a comment in 40-gpsd.rules rather than a new rule altogether.

To verify I commented out the launchpad-bug-518213.rulesI had created and now I can see a single /dev/gps* device appear when the device is plugged and see the dev go away when it is unplugged. But I am back to what I think should be auto detection not working as follows:

If I set the DEVICES line to the /dev/gps0, 1, 2, etc. - it moves around) via dpkg-reconfigure gpsd then xgps will pick up the signal right away. If I add several devices (e.g. "/dev/gps0 /dev/gps1 /dev/gps2" to DEVICES trying to cover all bases then xgps doesn't get the signal at all (same as if I leave DEVICES blank to auto detect). And I have never seen xgps get the signal when DEVICES is blank (which I understand from the comments should be auto detect which is on per the default package install).

 I'm very sorry if I missed the /dev/gps* device on plug before filing the bug, I had been looking for it (since this is what I would hard-wire on Januty) and didn't see it yesterday and was setting DEVICES to the tty device I could see show up after plugging the GPS instead.

Either way it seems there should be some combination that allows xgps (and I guess gpsd) to start listening to any single device that gets plugged and runs the gpsd.hotplug.wrapper.

I would be more than happy to try some other stuff evenings after work next week. Thanks again for your help!

[Bernd Zeimetz (bzed)]

Please retry with the version from Debian testing, I hope these issues are fixed.

[Miriam España Acebal (mirespace)]

Hi,

While doing some bug cleanup, I found this old bug.

First of all, thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 10.04 (lucid) reached end-of-life on May 9 (2013), so I'm afraid no further actions can be taken on this. I hope you follow Bernd's recommendations on upgrading to upper versions.

Also, as this bug is hardware dependent, it is truly difficult to see if this issue is still present on the current supported Ubuntu series (I have different gps devices, but not a Pharos one). But if you are still interested in discussing it, then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test. If you find the bug still in the newer Ubuntu version, please add a comment here telling us which new version it is in (and mark the bug "New" again).

Due to the above, I'm marking this bug as "Won't fix".