[Xastir] Hard error 6 when opening the ttyS0

[Byron Smith]

Ah - I've run into the infamous newbie hurdle: Error opening interface 6 
hard fail
for the ttys0 port. You that know this answer please shine some light on 
this one.

I gleaned the following from searching my Xastir emails from the last month 
or two:
I added comments in between suggestions.



>Check the owner/group/permissions of your /dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1
>ports in that case.  Make sure one of the following is done:
>
>1) Change the permissions allow a normal user to access it
>(considered a security risk if it's a multi-user system),


OK. My /dev/ttys0 shows:

crw-rw-rw-  1 root   tty   3,48 Jan 30 2003

So I suspect this serial port is "owned" by root.
I run Xastir from my user name, not root. Its my understanding this
is preferred for security reasons.



>2) The user has been added to the group owning the ports, or


Ok. From another program I could see the following for ttys0

Ownership  Root
Group      uucp

What would be the best way to handle this?
1) To add user's specific name to someplace as a member of this group (does 
that make this a security issue now?)
2) how does one go about doing this?


>3) The applications you are using change to the user or group of the
>ports when they need to access them.

Wouldn't this be a no-no? Xastir is owned by user name, not root as the 
install instructions suggested.

As usual, I am on a learning curve again. I'm still climbing, but I feel 
like I'm climbing a huge pile of
plastic balls - I'm not gaining much ground upwards ;-)


Byron Smith
wa6ylb at theworks.com

http://www.theworks.com/~wa6ylb

What was the best thing before sliced bread?