Prev: Stop Wi-Fi LED blinking
Next: upgrade Fedora without destroying data?
From: G8KBV on 11 Jul 2010 18:45

Hi..

New to Debian, and not familiar with Linux at all, but I wish to do some
work on a ham radio software package (Hamlib) but am having trouble
getting a few other things working, that are related to that, and will
be used to test the result.

Firstly, I've done a fresh network install of Debian 5.0, on an old
bashed about (as in abbused!) laptop, the install though slow went OK
and it all boots and (mostly) plays OK. I did it that way, as
downloading CD's and especialy DVD images is a pain here.


I've managed with some help from the author, to get Fldigi built, and
it's much to my amazement working through the on board soundcard.

Two problems at the mo.

One...
I have a FTDI based USB<>RS232 serial device I need to use, that the
system seems to recognise and load drivers for, according to the System
Log Viewer (Messages) where I can see the system load and unload the
needed modules when the device is plugged in, or removed. No error
messages, just stuff about what's loading/unloading etc.

But, in there the resulting serial port is labled ttyUSB0.

In Fldigi, and Cutecom (another serial port terminal program) they only
list /dev/ttyS0 to S4 That do not physicaly exist, so I guess there is
some link between the two systems that is missing.

How do I get the system to use this USB based serial port? The exact
same PC hardware running Windows(XP) or Puppy Linux (I swap hard drives
about) allows Fldigi and other serial comm's software to work well with
this device. Puppy id's and uses it as ttyUSB0, or somesuch, so I do
know it can work.

I tried a symbolic link (someone else's suggestoin) along the lines of
sudo ln -s /dev/ttyUSB0 /dev/ttyS0

That error'd saying ttyS0 was already in use. There is no COM port
hardware on that machine, only USB ports.

Another Ham radio program "Grig" works fine with the USB<>RS232 device
in question, so it is working, just that Fldigi and Cutecom can't see
it.

The Fldigi author suspects some directory permisions problem when it was
built, but not seeing the system here cant tell for sure.

Two...
The default Java Run Time Environment (JRE) is V1.5.0 This is way too
old for another (yet to be installed) app I wish to run. (jPSKmail,
that uses Fldigi as a modem. It's a Java app or .jar file)

I went to the Sun Java site, downloaded and followed the detailed
instructions to install their latest Linux JRE to replace the old one
that came with the OS. But, though that seems to have gone OK with no
errors (at least none visible) the old original JRE is still the one
that is invoked when asked.

So, who's got any words of wisdom to sort this out. I'm a relative
Linux noob, though I've messed with various live distro's in the past,
and have (cough.....) some 20+ years experiance with PC's in general,
DOS/Winders in particular. As a result of which, I find Linux very
alien to me, but when working, very slick indeed.

Anyone want to beat my brains out trying to fix this?


So I can go back and start again, without the 4+ hour install process,
what is the recomended way to cleanly remove any app, either installed a
a package (guess the manager will tidy up after it?) but especialy if
somehing was built from sources. Other than the source tree etc, what
else and where needs cleaning out.

And just how do you remove a launch menu item from one of the toolbar
drop down menu's?


Best Regards.

Dave B.

 | 
Pages: 1
Prev: Stop Wi-Fi LED blinking
Next: upgrade Fedora without destroying data?