Re: [leaf-user] PPP over serial please help

[Charles Steinkuehler]

Comments inline..random snip-age for readability.

Kache wrote:

In an attempt to make sure the serial port was
installed I found serial.o, copied it to the
/lib/modules directory, put it in a line in the
/etc/modules and rebooted. At the this point I when I
issue echo "hello" > /dev/ttyS0
command I still get the error
cannot create /dev/ttyS0: error 19

This is a *BIG* Problem. Until this does not fail, nothing related to the serial port will work.

I was trying to follow the instructions in this file:
http://www.bogor.net/idkf/linux-heboh/September%202001/LRP/PPPSERV.TXT

While the command echo "hello" > /dev/ttyS00 doesn't give any error messages although I have no
idea if that actually tells me anything.

This is simply creating a normal file named /dev/ttyS00. The device for "com1" on Dachstein is /dev/ttyS0. To make sure your devices are correct, verify the output of "ls -l /dev/ttyS?" with the following:

# ls -l /dev/ttyS?
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 64 Aug 13 12:01 /dev/ttyS0
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 65 Aug 13 12:01 /dev/ttyS1
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 66 Aug 13 12:01 /dev/ttyS2
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 67 Aug 13 12:01 /dev/ttyS3
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 68 Aug 13 12:01 /dev/ttyS4
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 69 Aug 13 12:01 /dev/ttyS5
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 70 Aug 13 12:01 /dev/ttyS6
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 71 Aug 13 12:01 /dev/ttyS7
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 72 Aug 13 12:01 /dev/ttyS8
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 73 Aug 13 12:01 /dev/ttyS9

And finally in my /etc/inittab my "modem line" line
looks like this:
T3:23:respawn:/sbin/mgetty -x0 -s 9600 ttyS0

Remove this! You need mgetty lines attached to serial ports in inittab only if you want to log in from a serial terminal (ie the serial terminal is another console port). You want to *NETWORK* over the serial port, so the serial port will be controlled by pppd, not mgetty. Of course, *ANYTHING* trying to use the serial port will be broken until you can get 'echo "hello" > /dev/ttyS0' working without error.

One more note: I'm assuming I should be on com1
because this leaf only has one com port to begin with.
So it makes sense to assume it's ttyS0, right? I've
also tried the echo line with ttyS1/2/3/4/5 by the
way. Same error 19.

This indicates the system is fundamentally not seeing your serial port for some reason. Crawl through the kernel boot messages (use <shift><page-up> at boot-time and/or dmesg) looking for where the kernel spits out information about attached serial ports. I suspect you have something mis-configured in hardware (I/O or IRQ setting), or are using non-standard values. If you serial port is at a non-standard I/O address or IRQ, you may have to pass parameters to the serial.o module when loading to get your port recognized.

And now every 5 minutes I get the familiar error
message:
INIT: cannot execute "/sbin/mgetty" (repeats about 12
times)
with a last line reading:
INIT: Id "T3" respawning too fast: disabled for 5
minutes.

This is as expected. You can't run getty on a port that isn't working properly.

So to sum up exactly what I want to do:
I want my leaf to assign an IP address to to a
computer over a serial port. This computer will be
running either linux or NT 4.

I'm telling you I've been searching and working on
this for a long time now including lots of googling
(I'm trying to avoid the typical "do a google"
responses).

At this point a simply paste of the lines from the
relevant files would be fine. I find most or all of
the how-tos either grossly outdated, simply
inaccurate, or assuming too much knowledge already.

Your biggest issue is figuring out why your serial port is not being recognized by the kernel. Crawl through the kernel boot messages looking for errors. Check your hardware I/O and IRQ settings, and make sure they are standard (Com1 is usually I/O: 0x3F8 IRQ:4) or you're passing the non-standard settings to the serial driver.

You can also try removing the serial driver manually with rmmod, then re-loading it with insmod. This might make any errors easier to spot, and will allow you to test required parameters to serial.o without rebooting.

Once you get the echo test working without an error to /dev/ttyS0, everything else should start falling into place. If you are still having problems, report all applicable errors, along with the contents of /proc/ioports, /proc/interrupts, /proc/modules, and /proc/devices.

A report on exactly what hardware is involved would also be a good idea, since your problems seem to be very low-level, which could indicate a hardware problem.

--
Charles Steinkuehler
[EMAIL PROTECTED]




-------------------------------------------------------
This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek
Welcome to geek heaven.
http://thinkgeek.com/sf
------------------------------------------------------------------------
leaf-user mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/leaf-user
SR FAQ: http://leaf-project.org/pub/doc/docmanager/docid_1891.html