Question about /dev (CF Card Reader)
 

Hey all. Thanks again for your help. I'm trying to use a compact flash drive to pass data from a compact flash GPS receiver. Using FC7, when I mount the card reader, it mounts two new /dev entries called "sdc" and "sg3". When I put the GPS CF in there, those go away and I think it's because it can't write to the device.

when I insert a CF storage card, it mounts under /media/disk. So I obviously need to mount the GPS CF card as a read only.

questions:
1. the CF storage card mounts automatically. What would the commands be to mount those if it wasn't automatic (pmount?)?
2. what command can I use to mount the GPS as a read only?

Hi usafitz, This should work.There is more info on cf card readers here.

Good luck. ;-)

You can't "mount" a GPS, it isn't a storage device. You need to find out of there are drivers that support this device specifically. It is using the Compact Flash form factor and pinout, but it isn't a standard CF card in the traditional sense (like SDIO cards).

I'm not even sure that you can do it with a USB card reader. I have Compact Flash WiFi cards, and they only work on my laptop when they are placed in a PCMCIA adapter.

Yep MS3FGX, looks like you're right. Here's what I get with the command:

[root@localhost dev]# mount -t vfat -o ro /dev/sdc /mnt/GPS
mount: /dev/sdc is not a valid block device

although that is exactly what I was looking for Peacedog. Thanks for the info.

I have some sort of express port instead of a PCMCIA slot, is that going to work the same way in linux?

@ MS3FGX, That's a nice catch, I saw "cf card" and "mount" and the rest of the post was blah, blah, blah. ;-)

@ usafitz, What type of GPS is it? There are a couple of projects for Garmin devices.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/garmin-gps/

http://pygarmin.sourceforge.net/

My apologies for not reading the post thoroughly. ;-)

It's a Haicom HI-305III. It's a pretty sweet piece of hardware. I bought it because it goes perfectly with my Toshiba pocket PC but now figured it would be a fun project to try to get it to work with kismet and what not. Thanks for the references.

You might look into one of these.

http://freshmeat.net/projects/gpsd/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/gpsbabel

Good luck. ;-)

These were great references, Peacedog. I read all of them but didn't have any progress. But that's alright, I'm gunna keep at it. I'm actually learning a lot from it, which is the point of the whole exercise :)

Another option that I have is to run a cable from the firewire port. Do you have any experience with these? what /dev/? could I look for to read from the firewire port?

Firewire devices show up on the scsi bus just like usb, i.e. sdX, etc. I've no idea if there are any compatible modules for the firewire subsystem and gps devices. You may find something useful here.
Good luck. ;-)