Bug#105451: update
"Russell, Gordon" <G.Russell@napier.ac.uk> writes:
> In any case mknod just creates files with minor and major numbers,
> and does not ask the kernel if these are valid. The validation only
> happens when the file is opened. The kernel only recognises major 4,
> with minor 64-67 as serial ports by default. Kernel variable
> CONFIG_SERIAL_MANY_PORTS provides extra minor numbers (how many
> ports this adds I cannot say). This may or may not be set for you
> in the kernel build... this information is printed out at boot time
> as " MANY PORTS" and I gather that this is not printed when the
> module is loaded, and thus I am guessing that it is not set. I am
> getting this from the 2.4.7 kernel source so things may be different
> in other kernel versions (but I doubt it).
I just confirmed that CONFIG_SERIAL_MANY_PORTS is not defined in the
kernels we use. That's the problem.
> The names of the ports and there numbers are really not that important.
> I am hoping that you only have a few serial ports in total (less than 4), so
> you can hopefully use ttyS3 or ttyS4 and use setserial to configure them to
> what you want without having to recompile the kernel.
Right.
> I can think of no good
> reason why MANY PORTS is not the default, though it probably adds a few 100
> bytes to the kernel size.
Size of the kernel is critically important, so that's probably why
it's disabled.
> You probably chose S14 as this is
> a SPARE tty (whatever this means) in serial.h when MANY_PORTS is defined.
Good idea.
I guess this is a documentation issue, then.
--
.....Adam Di Carlo....adam@onshore.com.....<URL:http://www.onshored.com/>
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