Gps, serial- usb, and udev

Question

I have a garmin etrex venture handheld gps device that I am trying to connect to my laptop.  Since my laptop doesn't have any serial ports, I purchased a serial->usb converter which I am using to make the connection.  When I connect the device, dmesg reports:
usb 2-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 4
usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
pl2303 2-2:1.0: pl2303 converter detected
usb 2-2: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0
There is no /dev/ttyUSB*.  I did a search and found http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … dev+ttyusb where tomk recommended the following rule:
KERNEL=="ttyUSB[0-9]*", NAME="tts/USB%n"
I put the rule in my local udev.rules file and rebooted.  I am still unable to transfer a test file to the gps using gpsbabel as outlined in the Open Source GPS how to.
The how to suggested the following command, with my output following:
$ sudo gpsbabel -r -i gpx -f test.gpx -o garmin -F /dev/ttyUSB0
[ERROR] XSERIAL: Cannot open serial port '/dev/ttyUSB0': No such file or directory
[ERROR] Cannot open serial port '/dev/ttyUSB0'
GARMIN:Can't init /dev/ttyUSB0
Which makes sense, since there is no /dev/ttyUSB0.
I then modified the command to point to /dev/tts/USB0 and got the following output:
$ sudo gpsbabel -r -i gpx -f test.gpx -o garmin -F /dev/tts/USB0
GARMIN:Can't init /dev/tts/USB0
If anyone has any idea what is going on and can point me in the right direction, I'd appreciate it.

Answer 1

Thanks for the help, tomk.  I was able to rule out any OS problems and it turns out that the serial -> usb converter market is filled with crappy products.  I never thought I'd have a problem with a simple converter!
For future reference, converters based on the prolific pl2303 controller are notoriously buggy.  Some work fine, others never work (mine is the latter), especially under linux. Here is a link for more info https://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/mes … d=10460644
On a side note - what is the reasoning for the udev rule that replaces /dev/ttyUSBx with /dev/tts/USBx?  Most everything I've seen indicates that simply using /dev/ttyUSBx is much more prevalent.