Sorry to re-hash this thread, but I too want to turn off the kernerl from caring about the back cover sensor. It's so I can get the N900 to see my SD card.

So you're saying that if we "ls -la /dev/mmcblk*" and all we see are mmcblk0p1, 0p2, etc and not mmcblk1p1, p2, etc then it's a hardware fault, a sensor fault? So we cannot get the N900 to see a memory card unless the hardware itself is fixed? If that's the case then my N900 is limited to 32gig - end of story.

Thanks