[Captivate Android Development] bmvik:
This is how I fixed my GPS issue on Captivate. It would not lock on, not even after 5 minutes of me standing still.

Found this thread - http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?t=786486

Was trying to follow the steps and realized I wished it was spelled out more. So this is what I am doing in this thread, to make it easier for everyone else, if they decide to try. After an hour of googling commands and trial and error - its done, and my phone's GPS locks on under 10 seconds.

I downloaded that zip file. Then installed Droid Explorer on my PC. I already had USB drivers installed for the Galaxy S, so during install I unchecked it. When I opened Droid Explorer I realized I cant write to the /system/bin and the other two. The Write permissions for the system folder were not set, so when I dragged files over - they wouldnt copy over to my phone. It would kinda "refresh" but files wouldnt show up in there.

Easy way seemed to be to buy and install Root Explorer on my phone from the market. And click on Mount R/W for the system folder. However I am waiting for credit card replacement in the mail and was so fed up with GPS that I wanted to do it NOW, and was not gonna stop until its done. Today.

So the other way to make /system/bin , /system/etc and /system/lib folders writable was thru command prompt.

First off my phone has Cog 5.5 on it so it is rooted.

1. set phone in usb debugging mode and connect to pc

2. navigated to my sdk/tools directory on my hard drive. In my case it looked like this

cd c:\sdk\tools

<hit enter> but it depends on where you downloaded and unzipped your android SDK folder

3. typed

adb shell

<hit enter> then

su

<hit enter> to give me root access to the phone.

The phone will ask if you want to grant permissions to unknown, hit Yes.

4. Now we need to set system as writable. While googling commands it seemed that the command should be

mount -o rw,remount /system

But in my case that didnt work, telling me location was invalid. I obviously was missing something. Duh! correct location! So -

type

mount

<hit enter> It will list the root directory. We need t locate exactly where system is on the phone. In my case it was /dev/block/st19 /system

So the command should be then

mount -o rw,remount /dev/block/st19 /system

<enter>

then

chmod 777 /system

<enter>

chmod 777 /system/bin

<enter>

chmod 777 /system/etc

<enter>

chmod 777 /system/lib

<enter>

exit

<enter>

and one more time

exit

<enter>

The folders are now writable.

5. Opened Droid Explorer, copied files over, lbstestmode launch app was already installed on my phone. So it didnt have to do that step, as it was in j101399j's thread

6. Rebooted the phone, opened lbstestmode, deleted GPS data.

Started testing. It wouldnt lock. Went to Get Position Test in lbstestmode app. It would see the sattellites, 8 of them but wouldnt give me my lat/long! So I remembered this post - http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=9150551&postcount=7862 by cnewsgrp

and changed

Didnt even have to reboot. Went to Get Position Test again and it saw like 8 or 9 satellites and had * next to 4 of them in 10 seconds. Give me my lat/long with precision. Wanted to mention that I tried cnewsgrp 's method a week ago, just by itself, and it gave me no results.

So to summarize. Combination of those 2 fixes worked wonders for me. And the Captivates GPS issue is definitely not hardware based.

I do have a question however,lol, how do I revoke write settings for my system folder, and go back to how it was? Would that be

chmod 755

?

I hope these detailed instructions help someone.