Crossworks MSP430, Launchpad and linux

I cannot use Crossworks v2.1.2.2011080305  for MSP430 with Launchpad MSP-EXP430G2 in Linux

Installed packages are up to date (MSP430 CPU support package v1.13) 

If I try to connect to target I get after a few seconds the message "Can't   connect to target /dev/ttyUSB000: Could not communicate with FET"

The  device permissions are all fine and a strace on the connect shows the /dev/ttyUSB000 device opened correctly, then 5 ioctl calls to the device return 0 (no error) are followed by a write of 6 bytes and then read does not return any byte.

As a side note there is a bug in the menu when you right-click and  "Select Target Connection"  there is always an extra line with garbage characters (I presume because of a not null terminated string)

Here are the details  of my system and TI launchpad:

$ uname -a
Linux hexa 3.4.4 #1 Tue Jun 26 17:46:39 BST 2012 i686 GNU/Linux

$ lsusb
Bus 008 Device 008: ID 0451:f432 Texas Instruments, Inc. eZ430 Development Tool

$ ll /dev/tty[A-Z]*0
crw-rw-rwT 1 root dialout 166, 0 Jul 3 16:15 /dev/ttyACM0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Jul 3 16:15 /dev/ttyUSB000 -> ttyACM0

$dmesg

 usb 8-1: new full-speed USB device number 8 using uhci_hcd
cdc_acm 8-1:1.0: This device cannot do calls on its own. It is not a modem.
cdc_acm 8-1:1.0: No union descriptor, testing for castrated device
cdc_acm 8-1:1.0: ttyACM0: USB ACM device
generic-usb 0003:0451:F432.0007: usb_submit_urb(ctrl) failed: -1
generic-usb 0003:0451:F432.0007: timeout initializing reports
generic-usb 0003:0451:F432.0007: hiddev0,hidraw0: USB HID v1.01 Device [Texas Instruments Texas Instruments MSP-FET430UIF] on usb-0000:02:02.1-1/input1