The Haus

Thursday, October 10, 2002

Mandrake 9.0 and Visors

The only gripe I've had about Mandrake 9.0 so far is getting my Visor Deluxe to sync with JPilot. Mandrake uses devfs which creates the /dev entries as the devices are needed. That's all fine and good, except that I can't change permissions on a device that doesn't exist. By default, only root can read and write it.

I found the solution via Google. There is a script called /etc/dynamic/scripts/visor.script that is run whenever a Palm or Visor is being synced. It creates a temporary symbolic link from the proper devfs entry to /dev/pilot. I changed the line that reads:

ln -sf $2 /dev/pilot

to read

ln -sf $2 /dev/pilot && chmod 666 $2

Basically, besides creating the symbolic link, it also gives read/write permission to everyone to that port. Since it only exists for the duration of the sync with devfs, there are no potential security issues (not that I think there are any in the first place).

News for 10/10/2002

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