[Xastir] serial port error with serial GPS

[Curt, WE7U]

On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, Amanda K. Martino wrote:

> I have Xastir compiled with ImageMagick support on a P3 machine running
> Linux Red Hat 9. I've tried using both serial TNC and serial GPS with
> Xastir. Serial TNC works just fine. Serial GPS, however, gives me an
> "Error opening Interface 0. Hard fail" when I try to start the interface.
> I did run the chmod 4555 /usr/local/bin/xastir command when I compiled
> Xastir, and my procedure for starting up Xastir is as follows:
> login to linux as user capstone
> su to root
> xastir & from a terminal window as root.

Once you've done the "chmod" command, it allows Xastir to gain root
priviledges when it needs to, such as when opening ports.  You don't
need to "su" in order to run Xastir, and in fact it's not
recommended because then when Xastir tries to drop priviledges when
it doesn't need them, you're still running as root.

I'd run Xastir as the "capstone" user.


> I don't see how it could be a permissions problem, but as I'm new to
> Xastir I don't have much to base that on except what I just described
> above. As mentioned before, serial TNC works perfectly fine. Does anyone
> have any suggestions as to what might be causing this? Thanks in advance
> for any help.

If you do an "ls -l /dev/ttyS?" you'll see the permissions and
user/group for your serial devices.  You are probably using
/dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1 for your ports, right?

In your /etc/group file, add your "capstone" user to whatever group
the serial ports belong to.  On my system it's the "uucp" group.
Change the permissions on the serial devices to 660 if they're not
already.  Mine look like this:

crw-rw----    1 root     uucp       4,  64 2003-10-02 13:45 /dev/ttyS0
crw-rw----    1 root     uucp       4,  65 2003-10-02 13:45 /dev/ttyS1
crw-rw----    1 root     uucp       4,  66 2003-10-02 13:45 /dev/ttyS2
crw-rw----    1 root     uucp       4,  67 2003-10-02 13:45 /dev/ttyS3

After that, you should be able to come in using the "uucp"
permissions as the "capstone" user, and run Xastir as the "capstone"
user as well.  Make sense?

Also make sure you have the case correct for the device name in the
Interface->Properties dialog for that interface.  You need a capital
'S'.

--
Curt, WE7U			    archer at eskimo dot com
Arlington, WA, USA		http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
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