PPP connection between PalmOS and Ubuntu (over ttyUSB0?) without crashy "visor" kernel module

Question

I have a Palm Treo 680 which I'd like to use as a media remote, using Palm MPC. Almost the exact instructions on that page used to work perfectly for establishing a PPP connection over the USB cable; I think I last tried it in Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty). In Karmic, I find that /dev/ttyUSB{0,1} are not present by default, and when I modprobe visor to get them, the Palm immediately crashes and reboots, as seen in Ubuntu bug 522753 (it reboots again as long as the module is still loaded and USB is still connected). The usbserial module has the same result.

From reading that bug and elsewhere, it appears that the visor module is abandoned, and jpilot and friends use some other approach to talk to PalmOS over USB these days, which might not even involve a ttyUSB device. My question is, therefore:

How do I create a PPP connection between PalmOS and Karmic without crashing the Palm?

Answer 1

Assuming you have a default Karmic 9.10 setup, it is not visor/usbserial module crashing your Palm, but the buggy modem-manager. Following this launchpad bug, all you need is to remove modem-manager package (and probably reboot).

As there is AFAIK no other way to communicate with your Palm other than through ttyUSB*, and because everyone report that their Palm syncs successfully, PPP connection should work too (if you won't do weird things with the tty like modem-manager does)