Can't get GPS to automatically work after reboot

Question

I have GPSd installed, but I can't get it to work after reboot.

After reboot, when I run cgps -s I just get cgps: GPS timeout. However, if I run: sudo killall gpsd; sudo gpsd /dev/ttyUSB0 -F /var/run/gpsd.sock then cgps works just fine.

After running sudo dpkg-reconfigure gpsd, here's my /etc/default/gpsd file:

# Default settings for gpsd.
# Please do not edit this file directly - use `dpkg-reconfigure gpsd' to
# change the options.
START_DAEMON="true"
GPSD_OPTIONS="-n"
DEVICES="/dev/ttyUSB0"
USBAUTO="true"
GPSD_SOCKET="/var/run/gpsd.sock"

What can I do to get it working after reboot? Thanks!

Answer 1

I found a solution from here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=53644

The TL;DR is that you run sudo dpkg-reconfigure gpsd and disable USB AutoLoad

My steps:

1. sudo dpkg-reconfigure gpsd
2. Start gpsd automatically? Yes
3. Should gpsd handle attached USB GPS receivers automatically? No
4. Device the GPS receiver is attached to: /dev/gps0 (check that on your machine to match)
5. Options to gpsd: -n
6. gpsd control socket path: /var/run/gpsd.sock

So the correct /etc/default/gpsd would be:

# Default settings for gpsd.
# Please do not edit this file directly - use `dpkg-reconfigure gpsd' to
# change the options.
START_DAEMON="true"
GPSD_OPTIONS="-n"
DEVICES="/dev/gps0"
USBAUTO="false"
GPSD_SOCKET="/var/run/gpsd.sock"

Answer 2

I had a problem with this today with Raspbian Jesse, which may help some people. Solution for my set up to enable automatic start of GPS on bootup for NAVIT, was as follows:

First set the following with sudo nano /etc/default/gpsd:

START_DAEMON="true"
# Use USB hotplugging to add new USB devices automatically to the daemon
USBAUTO="true"
# Devices gpsd should collect to at boot time.
# They need to be read/writeable, either by user gpsd or the group dialout.
DEVICES="/dev/ttyUSB0"
# Other options you want to pass to gpsd
GPSD_OPTIONS="/dev/ttyUSB0"
GPSD_SOCKET=”/var/run/gpsd.sock”

I had previously worked through the following:

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-ultimate-gps-hat-for-raspberry-pi/use-gpsd

So I simply did the following to re-enable the psd systemd service:

sudo systemctl enable gpsd.socket
sudo systemctl start gpsd.socket

Answer 3

I had the same problem and like @Dan Mandle, I found the answer at the same URI https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=53644

However, the configuration file was different as submitted by amrbekhit. The/etc/default/gpsd file that worked for me was the following:

# Default settings for gpsd.
# Please do not edit this file directly - use `dpkg-reconfigure gpsd' to
# change the options.
START_DAEMON="true"
GPSD_OPTIONS="/dev/ttyUSB0"
DEVICES=""
USBAUTO="true"
GPSD_SOCKET="/var/run/gpsd.sock"

Answer 4

Same problem here on Raspbian Lite of July 2017, release date 2017-07-05, with a ublox based USB GPS from Navilock.

The /etc/default/gpsd file that worked for me was the following:

START_DAEMON="true"
USBAUTO="true"
DEVICES="/dev/ttyACM0"
GPSD_OPTIONS="-n"
GPSD_SOCKET="/var/run/gpsd.sock"

But systemctl enable gpsd.service does not create the correct symlink, instead it modifies the old sysvinit with update-rc.d. I don't know why systemctl chooses to go for sysvinit here, but it took me a couple of hours figuring that out. With some more searching I found this post from federico.human referring to this original guide who also come to this solution:

sudo ln -s /lib/systemd/system/gpsd.service /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/

After a reboot gpsd is up an running, check with ps -aux | grep gpsd

Answer 5

I had problems for sometime to trying to get cgps to run on the terminal, sometimes it worked, most times it never worked correctly, what I had used to edit the file and save was..

sudo nano /etc/default/gpsd 

But when I typed in the following code at the terminal. sudo dpkg-reconfigure gpsd

I received "Creating/updating gpsd user account..." I then rebooted and it all Worked when I ran cgps or gpsmon.

Thank you Dan Mandel :)

Since my GPS is not a USB device, my code in the gpsd file: etc/default/gpsd

was only

START_DAEMON="true"
DEVICES="/dev/serial0"