midi communication in Linux

Hi, I have done a quick search of the threads, and a more extensive search on Google, but did not find what I was looking for. Here's the situation: I own a Behringer V-amp 2, and it connects via midi in and out ports to my computer. Behringer has a program for Windows only which lets you control the unit and store information to the unit. I do all my sound recording in Linux however, and am considering learning what I need to make some kind of program to interface with the unit under Linux. Can anybody help me find out where to even start? I know some C++, I'm really asking for information about MIDI. I think I might need to learn something about sysex as well. There's got to be a way to search the computer's input of the MIDI port to check for hardware. Right now Linux does not even list the device as present on the MIDI port (I'm using Jack). I am guessing that I either need some kind of linux driver so it can recognize the device, or I need to figure out how to send a specific sysex message to query the device so that it will respond with data and make a connection. It seems like the latter would be simpler, and I suspect more likely. Thanks for any input, and I will post any progress I make.

EDIT:
Well I have made some exciting progress on this whole thing. I got a program called sysexxer for linux which was able to receive a sysex dump that I sent from the v-amp. I can save the file which is 58kb and view it using a hex editor. So I've discovered a few things about what the bytes represent. It's not nearly complete, but it's a good start. I also found (in the actual user's manual) a midi chart listing the actual midi bytes to send to the device to edit all the parameters. So now the goal is to complete (as much as possible) the sysex implementation of the v-amp, and then write a program to handle the midi and sysex in and out (plus a "librarian" for all the different presets, instead of doing one at a time). So, anyhow I will no longer post under device communication as I have made a connection with the software. When I get to the program design and coding, I will probably be back on the boards under C++ (probably Linux programming). I hope everybody isn't completely uninterested, especially because if I complete this project it would be a good contribution to the free software community. Plus I'd be able to use my v-amp with linux. That's what I really want. Cheers!

Sounds like a good project . . . did you try wine-ing the Windows program, by any chance? It would be really slow, but at least it might let you use the v-amp until you write a proper driver for it. ;)