from the shell, again, what does
ls -ld /drive0 /drive0/var /drive0/var/gpsapp /drive0/var/gpsapp/routes
give?

empeg:/drive0/var/gpsapp# ls -ld /drive0 /drive0/var /drive0/var/gpsapp /drive0/
var/gpsapp/routes
drwxr-xr-x 6 0 0 1024 Jan 26 08:01 /drive0
drwxr-xr-x 6 0 0 1024 Jan 26 08:48 /drive0/var
drwxr-xr-x 3 0 0 1024 Jan 27 01:16 /drive0/var/gpsapp
drwxr-xr-x 2 0 0 1024 Jan 26 07:52 /drive0/var/gpsapp/route
s
empeg:/drive0/var/gpsapp#

Note that the dangling S is just a wrap-around in hyperterminal at 80 columns. The directory really is named "routes".

the line including "(strlen 24)" says it's correctly parsing the config.ini and setting routedir

If you say so. I just don't see any debug output saying "The routedir variable was set to /drive0/var/gpsapp/routes", I only see debug output that's spitting out the entire contents of my config.ini back at me. Since I don't know how the internal code works, I don't know how to interpret that debug output. I don't know what variables it's supposed to be showing me.