I have a GIS app, TNTMips by Microimages Inc., which is protected by a
serial dongle.
I installed it on SuSE 5.3 and kernel 2.0.35 and the app checked for the
presence of the dongle all the time without problems. Then I installed
SUSE 6.1 with kernel 2.2.5 and the app could not communicate with the
dongle anymore. I had to revert to kernel 2.1.132 to get it running,
although I have to try several time. The dongle is connected to
/dev/ttyS3 on a ISA multiport card: the port works with all kernels
wiith ppp and minicom, so it is not an HW problem. I tested the built-in
serial ports on the motherboard and they do not work either.
I need an SMP capable kernel because I am running an Abit BP6 with two
Celeron 400. I put up with this problem for some time but now I would
like to solve it. Microimages promised a patch but the bug seems harder
than usual.
What I can say is that strace reports, among other things, a write()
sending a string to the dongle followed by several hundreds read() calls
which fail with -1 (Device temporarily unavailable or something like
this). A few read()'s do not fail and contain some data.. This process
is repeated three or four times. Under SuSe 5.3 and kernel 2.0.35 the
read() calls are interleaved with time(NULL) calls: under kernel 2.1.132
and later the time(NULL) call is not reported by strace. Even under
kernel 2.0.35 many hundreds read() calls fail, but in the end enough
data is returned and the check succeeds.
It seems to me that there is a timing problem and, please help me solve
it, in the form of a kernel patch (the least preferred option because
ppp and minicom work all right) or a hint to Microimages' developers.
Any help is heartily appreciated.
Carlo Scarfoglio
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