[wellylug] Palm pilot USB hotsync problems

David Antliff dave.antliff at paradise.net.nz
Fri Mar 5 23:07:10 NZDT 2004


On Fri, 5 Mar 2004, JP wrote:

> Some questions:
>
> 1) What's the output from the following commands,
> before you have plugged in the handheld:
> ls /proc/bus/usb
> lsmod  (you probably need to be root for that one)

Actually, as far as I know you don't need to be root. If anything, on some
Linux distributions lsmod is in /sbin or /usr/sbin, and a typical user
account does not have this location in $PATH. Therefore it *seems* you
have to be root to run it, when in fact it's an illusion - when you are
root, you have the sbin dirs and the command is found. You can type the
full path as non-root and it should work.

Incidentally, with Debian, lsmod is simply a symlink to insmod. In Gentoo,
it's a binary executable. I can't speak for Redhat - I wouldn't be
surprised if something else happens there, like flashing keyboard lights
or user account deletion. Redhat doesn't surprise me any more -
I've learned to expect the unexpected.

Anyway, the information is available in /proc/modules which is chmod 444
by default. lsmod simply uses this information (which differs in format
between Linux 2.4 and 2.6 btw) and displays it in a particular manner, as
well as doing a few other utility-type tasks. So a simple 'cat
/proc/modules' will work too.

Cheers,
David.




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