Dave Gutteridge
2005-Sep-03 04:00 UTC
[CentOS] Changing permissions on files that only exist during USB operation
A while back I got help in getting my Palm Pilot to connect to CentOS, and through the advice I got here I was able to successfully back up my files to the computer using the CentOS default Palm utility. However, I now want to use JPilot to sync and install files. But when I attempt to sync through JPilot, I get the following error: ******************************* Syncing on device /dev/pilot Press the Hotsync button now ******************************* pi_bind Invalid argument Check your serial port and settings Exiting with status SYNC_ERROR_BIND Finished I searched on the net, and it would seem that this is because of a permissions problem with the /dev/pilot files. The advice I am following is here: http://www.brandonhutchinson.com/Running_JPilot_as_a_non-privileged_user.html On this page the writer says that there are two ways to solve the problem - make the user the owner of the device, or make the device world writable. The author of the page says "making files (especially devices) world-writable should be avoided", but I think I'm not bothered either way. In any case, when it comes to making the device owned by anyone or world-writable, I'm not sure how to proceed. Retracing some of the steps given tome on this list before, I can see that the relevant device files have the following permissions: [root at localhost dev]# ls -l /dev/ttyUSB* /dev/pilot lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Sep 3 11:57 /dev/pilot -> ttyUSB1 crw-rw---- 1 root uucp 188, 0 Sep 3 11:57 /dev/ttyUSB0 crw------- 1 dave uucp 188, 1 Sep 3 11:57 /dev/ttyUSB1 So, I either want to give the user "dave" permission to use ttyUSB 1 and 0, or make those files world-writable. But where I hit a wall is that I can't figure out how to change the permissions on these files because they only appear when I hot sync the palm, a process that only lasts for a few seconds, maybe 15 or 20 at the most, and also tends to get enough attention from the CPU to make it so it's tough to switch to the command line and enter in any commands in time. I tried the following, but the settings don't seem to stick for the next sync operation: [root at localhost dev]# chown dave /dev/ttyUSB0 /dev/ttyUSB1 The advice I got last time on this list did speak about permissions, but unfortunately, I didn't pursue the issue because I thought the issue had been solved when I was able to make the basic connection at all to CentOS. So my question is, how do I change permission on these temporarily existing device files to that JPilot will not return errors? Dave
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams
2005-Sep-03 04:44 UTC
[CentOS] Changing permissions on files that only exist during USB operation
On Sat, 3 Sep 2005, Dave Gutteridge wrote:> A while back I got help in getting my Palm Pilot to connect to CentOS, and > through the advice I got here I was able to successfully back up my files to > the computer using the CentOS default Palm utility.http://www.clasohm.com/blog/one-entry?entry_id=12096 -- Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams