Palm TX connecting on USB does not have consistent device name

[Reuben Firmin]

When I connect my Palm TX to my PC via USB, it is given varying device names. Further, the devices are always owned by root, meaning that regular users are unable to connect to them (at least, kpilot only works if I connect as root; pilot-link doesn't work at all.)

To illustrate:

~$ ls -al /dev/ttyUSB?
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 188, 0 2006-12-09 09:56 /dev/ttyUSB0
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 188, 1 2006-12-09 09:56 /dev/ttyUSB1

~$ ls -al /dev/ttyUSB?
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 188, 2 2006-12-09 09:58 /dev/ttyUSB2
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 188, 3 2006-12-09 09:58 /dev/ttyUSB3

[Jonathan Anderson (jonathan-anderson)]

This is true.

As suggested on kpilot.org, I created a file /etc/udev/rules.d/10-palmpilot.rules that looks like this:

KERNEL="ttyUSB*",
 NAME="%k",
 SYMLINK="pilot",
 GROUP="plugdev",
 MODE="0666"

Perhaps the kpilot package should include such a file.

[Jason 'vanRijn' Kasper (vr-movingparts)]

It would sure be nice if distros would give sane permissions to pilot devices, but that's another issue entirely.

There's actually 2 problems here. Older versions of KPilot didn't deal well with weird Palm devices that trigger an immediate connection to the PC when you dock them. That's why you have /dev/ttyUSB{0,1} and /dev/ttyUSB{2,3}, I believe. KPilot from KDE 3.5.10 or greater should not have this problem.

The second problem is the device permissions problem. The solution for that should be either a udev rule as Jon posted, or adding yourself to the "dialout" group.

I think this bug can be closed.

(I'm the KPilot developer/maintainer... sorry I didn't introduce myself properly... =;))

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

Closing then. Thanks for the attention you've given to the bugs.

[Reuben Firmin (reubenf)]

Thanks. My eeepc is my travel companion these days, but I will dig up my Palm and try this out when I have time to check.