On 2015-01-15 14:58, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:
That is possible. As I said, the forum thread related to this that was referenced early on in this thread made the claim.
I read the thread some time ago, so I don't remember now what exactly it said about that. I will have to look again.
Zero configuration would probably only work with USB devices.
Correct.
I think there is some logic in gpsd to explore if a GPS can be detected on all serial ports. But I do not know how well that works or if it messes things up. Still, for that to happen, a startup mechanism is needed. It cannot check if it is not started.
No exploration needed. Whenever you plug any USB device, it advertises two numbers, one for the manufacturer, another for the model. With that, the operating system can decide what to do. In Linux (udev, I think) listens and loads (or triggers) the appropriate software or does the appropriate action (which can be nothing). Like opening a file browser, camera software, mobile phone networking, music player... or a GPS driven navigation application. Some of those depend on the desktop, others could be from the system. gpsd can use this mechanism. This is impossible to do with rs232, it has to be manual; but it can be a service script that starts at boot, same as for a fax machine or modem. But the administrator has to enable it.
gpsdrive can talk to a gpsd to get data. gpsd is a GPS multiplexer making GPS data available to any number of clients. I think it is probably bad that gpsdrive contains it's own gpsd.
I see. I'm not familiar with actually using gps devices in Linux, so I don't know the apps. I know the theory and common sense... ;-) I don't think writing your own service file (init style, if you wish) would be difficult. They are still supported. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 13.1 x86_64 "Bottle" at Telcontar)