GPSINIT(8)

✨ GPSINIT(8) ✨

okay bestie, welcome to gpsinit — the little glow-up tool from the GPSD Documentation that gets your kernel modules ready so gpsd can actually talk to your fancy non-serial hardware 💅

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🎀 NAME 🎀

gpsinit — initialize CAN kernel modules for GPSD

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

gpsinit [-n control] [-s speed] module_name [interface_name]

gpsinit -h

gpsinit -V

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so like, gpsinit initializes whatever kernel-level modules are needed to enable special non-serial hardware to communicate with a gpsd instance. heads up tho: it will need root permissions to load modules and perform other special operations, such as changing kernel-interface baudrates. it's giving main character energy but with sudo 😭

At present, all modes of this tool are concerned with setting up kernel-level interfaces to hardware on a CAN (Control Area Network) speaking NMEA2000. yes bestie, we're in CAN-land now 🚗✨

The program accepts the following options:

• -h — Display a brief help text.
• -n — Set the CAN network number. The default is 0.
• -s — Set the baudrate to be used to communicate over the serial line to the CAN hardware. The default is 38400 baud.
• -V — Display the version of gpsinit.

The parameter module_name is mandatory. The socket CAN driver module module_name.ko will be loaded. gpsinit recognize the following module names:

• plx_pci, esd_usb2, vcan, slcan — The parameter interface_name and -s speed can used here.
• beaglebone — The dcan module needed for the beaglebone is part of the Linux kernel, so no module is loaded in this case.

The parameter interface_name is needed for slcan hardware only. It gives the name of the serial device to which the SL CAN hardware is connected. The default is /dev/ttyUSB0.

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💖 EXAMPLES 💖

All the following examples probably need to be run as root. no cap 🫶

• gpsinit plx_pci — Attempt to load the module plx_pci and initialize net 0 for the connection to a NMEA2000 network. It will set the baudrate to 250kBits.
• gpsinit -n 1 plx_pci — As above, but use net 1.
• gpsinit -s 38400 slcan /dev/ttyUSB0 — Attempt to load the module slcan and talk to the hardware at 38400 baud connected to port /dev/ttyUSB0.
• gpsinit -h — Display a brief help message.
• gpsinit -v — Display the version of gpsinit.

not me noticing the examples say -v while the options list says -V 🙈 keeping it exactly as the original wrote it, fr fr. copy-paste it verbatim bestie, don't @ me.

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🌈 RETURN VALUES 🌈

• 0 — on success. slay ✨
• 1 — on failure 😭

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🍓 SEE ALSO 🍓

gpsd(8), gps(1)

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🧚 RESOURCES 🧚

Project web site: https://gpsd.io/

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👑 COPYING 👑

This file is Copyright 2013 by the GPSD project SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-2-clause

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💜 AUTHOR 💜

Reinhard Arlt

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and that's the whole vibe check, bestie 🫶 this page is from GPSD, Version 3.27.5, dated 2025-11-04 — iconic, timeless, periodt 💅🌸