Palm Pilot Sync

[John Moniz]

Here's hoping everyone had a good Christmas and I hope 2006 brings 
prosperity, especially to those now finding themselves in a bit of need.

Sorry for the long post, but I've done a lot of pasting to clarify things.

I had no trouble syncronising my USB Palm Pilot (Zire 71) in Mandrake 
10.1, but had one heck of a time doing it in FC4. After many hours of 
frustration and with the help of TLUG archives and the Hanspring-Visor 
mini HOWTO, I finally succeeded using the pilot-link command line - 
ONCE!!! As soon as the palm was turned off, I couldn't make it sync 
without starting the whole process over again. It all boils down to the 
devices and nodes I created not sticking around after the palm is shut down.

The palm is recognized when I press the hotsync button. This is what I 
get from dmesg:
visor 1-2.2:1.0: Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter detected
usb 1-2.2: Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter now attached to ttyUSB0
usb 1-2.2: Handspring Visor / Palm OS converter now attached to ttyUSB1
usbcore: registered new driver visor
drivers/usb/serial/visor.c: USB HandSpring Visor / Palm OS driver v2.1

Following the instructions of the HOWTO, here's what I did:
1) Added the following line to my fstab file:
none                    /proc/bus/usb           usbdevfs        
defaults        0 0
2) Added the following nodes:

mknod /dev/ttyUSB0 c 188 0
mknod /dev/ttyUSB1 c 188 1
chmod 666 /dev/ttyUSB*

3) Linked ttyUSB1 to pilot:

ln -s /dev/ttyUSB1 /dev/pilot

4) lsmod indicated that the visor module was loaded.
5) Tried it out:

pilot-xfer -p /dev/ttyUSB1 -b  visorbackup

and it worked, I got a backup of my palm.

The problem is that when I shut off the palm, ttyUSB0 and ttyUSB1 have 
disappeared. The next time I boot, even /dev/pilot has disappeared. None 
of it comes back when I press the hotsync button.

I take it this is something to do with FC4 not using devfs??? How do I 
keep the USB nodes I created?

Thanks,

John.
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