stuck again with gpilotd, sony clie sj30 and usb

[Lars Weissflog <l weissflog gmx de>]

Dear all, dear David, 

here I am again, smoking head after a week of trying. I had to send my
laptop in several times to HP and now I can't get gpilotd to work again.
1) I got latest versions of pilot-ling (.11.7) and gpilot (0.1.71)
2) I managed to get a list from 
  pilot-xfer -p /dev/ttyUSB1 -l 
   several times. 

And I recompiled both several times with all those prefixes set that
were mentioned in Davids earlier replies to my posts (some month ago).
There was one thing that made me wonder, but obviously didn't cause any
harm: ./configure for pilot-link ended with these lines:

---- s-----
 Options detected/selected 
  -------------------------.
  pilot-link version...... : 0.11.7
  libpisock version....... : 8.0.4
  Build for host.......... : i686-pc-linux-gnu
  Extra Warnings.......... : no
  Direct USB support...... : yes, Linux
  ElectricFence checks.... : no
  CFLAGS.................. : -g -O2
  CXXFLAGS................ : -g -O2

  Internal Language Support
  -------------------------.
  C++ support............. : yes
  Iconv support........... : yes
  PNG support............. : yes
  Readline support........ : full

  External Language Support
  -------------------------.
  TCL support............. : no	
  ITCL support............ : no	
  TK Support.............. : no	
  Java support............ : no	
  Python support.......... : no	
  Perl support............ : no	

---- s-----
First two blocks look good, but is it normal that there is ZERO external
language support? I have at least TCL and Perl installed. Does this mean
anything? 

But there is something that makes me wonder:
Kernel is 2.4.20 plain, i.e. no further "pre" or "ac" patches. Compiled
with these USB-Options:
--- snip ---

# CONFIG_USB_IRDA is not set
# CONFIG_INPUT_IFORCE_USB is not set
# USB support
CONFIG_USB=m
CONFIG_USB_DEBUG=y
# Miscellaneous USB options
CONFIG_USB_DEVICEFS=y
# CONFIG_USB_BANDWIDTH is not set
CONFIG_USB_LONG_TIMEOUT=y
# USB Host Controller Drivers
# CONFIG_USB_EHCI_HCD is not set
CONFIG_USB_UHCI=m
CONFIG_USB_UHCI_ALT=m
# CONFIG_USB_OHCI is not set
# USB Device Class drivers
# CONFIG_USB_AUDIO is not set
# CONFIG_USB_EMI26 is not set
# CONFIG_USB_BLUETOOTH is not set
# CONFIG_USB_MIDI is not set
...
CONFIG_USB_PRINTER=m
# USB Human Interface Devices (HID)
CONFIG_USB_HID=m
CONFIG_USB_HIDINPUT=y
CONFIG_USB_HIDDEV=y
# CONFIG_USB_KBD is not set
# CONFIG_USB_MOUSE is not set
# CONFIG_USB_AIPTEK is not set
# CONFIG_USB_WACOM is not set
...
CONFIG_USB_SCANNER=m
# CONFIG_USB_MICROTEK is not set
# CONFIG_USB_HPUSBSCSI is not set
...
# USB Serial Converter support
CONFIG_USB_SERIAL=m
# CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_DEBUG is not set
CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_GENERIC=y
# CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_BELKIN is not set
# CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_WHITEHEAT is not set
# CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_DIGI_ACCELEPORT is not set
# CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_EMPEG is not set
# CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_FTDI_SIO is not set
CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_VISOR=m
# CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_IPAQ is not set
# CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_IR is not set
...

(... ripped out to shorten, all ripped options are NOT SET!)

--- snap ---

I get all those modules and the kernel working. Now, here is what makes
me wonder: neither usb-uhci.o nor uhci.o get loaded automatically. Thus,
visor.o loads but if I press hotsync no messages appear in syslog. This
noticed, I insmod'ed either uhci.o or usb-uhci.o successfully by hand
and afterwards syslog shows clie connecting and after that I can do
pilot-xfer things. Shouldn't the system auto-load uhci.o whenever visor
or usbcore or *usb*-modules are loaded? How can my system believe it
could do USB-things without loading a driver for the uhci-chip-stuff at
least?
Okay, as I start to fiddle on all screws I changed all dependencies in
/lib/modules/2.4.20/modules.dep that pointed to "usbcore.o" to point at
"uhci.o". Thus, whenever something that used to call "usbcore.o" gets
loaded, it now calls "uhci.o" which in turn depends on "usbcore.o" so
that both get loaded. Fine. Now after "modprobe visor" I allways get 
----- s ----
root carryme:/lib/modules/2.4.20# lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by    Not tainted
visor                   8640   0  (unused)
usbserial              16544   0  [visor]
uhci                   24584   0  (unused)
usbcore                61760   0  [visor usbserial uhci]
irtty                   5600   2  (autoclean)
irda                   81292   1  (autoclean) [irtty]
apm                     9536   3  (autoclean)
nls_iso8859-1           2880   1  (autoclean)
nls_cp437               4384   1  (autoclean)
vfat                    9052   1  (autoclean)
fat                    30232   0  (autoclean) [vfat]
tulip                  39232   1 
input                   3328   0  (unused)
--- s ---

Though this looks nice, I don't understand why uhci is (unused). If
Visor was loading but didn't work without it, than uhci should now be
used by visor, shouldn't it?
Anyway, this works now and I can do pilot-xfer.

But now comes the real problem:

---- s----
fungata carryme:~$ gpilotd
gpilotd-Message: gnome-pilot 0.1.71 starting...
gpilotd-Message: compiled for pilot-link version 0.11.7
gpilotd-Message: compiled with [VFS] [USB] [IrDA] [Network] 

gpilotd-WARNING **: Number of pilots is configured to 0
gpilotd-Message: Activating CORBA server

gpilotd-WARNING **: Could not open /proc/bus/usb/devices - make sure you
have the usbdevfs properly configured and mounted.

---- s----

Okay, I understand warning number 1: I actually did'n complete the
device-configuartion in control-center because it was never able to read
my UserID from the palm. So gpilotd doesn't know anything about my clie
yet. But what is that last warning telling me? AFAIK the "usbdevfs" has
nothing to do with the other "/devfs".stuff (which btw makes my system
unbootable if i compile it. But I don't intend to use that anyway, was
just a test)
So what do I have to do to get that warning satisfied? I did compile the
kernel with "proc" support:

---- s----
# CONFIG_BSD_PROCESS_ACCT is not set
# CONFIG_I2O_PROC is not set
# CONFIG_REISERFS_PROC_INFO is not set
CONFIG_PROC_FS=y
---- s----

 and there in fact is a /proc/bus/usb - dir but it's completly empty. 
So here I believe is my problem. What to do?

Any help greatly apreaciated.

Regards
Lars