[Xastir] USB dongle suggestion...

[William Gery]

USB to serial adapters have unique device ids ( serial numbers ) 
The serial number can be found in the file /proc/bus/usb/devices 
Since I have several,  I connected them one at a time and copied down
the number. 

Then a rule was created for each which creates symbolic links when the
USB adapters is plugged in. The software using the interface is
configured to use the alias. Example for xastir I have three TNC/s
connected.   /dev/ttytnc0, /dev/ttytnc1, and  /dev/ttytnc2 which
correspond to device 0, device 1 and device 2 for xastir interfaces. In
this way the actual /dev/ttyUSB does not matter since the software used
the symbolic link dev which is based on the USB adapters serial number.
     
Six of the 7 usb adapter shown below are from the same manufacturer.
 
Hope this helps

sample 25-usbserial.rules in /etc/udev/rules.d Fedora core 4 and 5


#KERNEL="tty[A-Z]*", SYSFS{serial}="FTCCGJQ8", SYMLINK="ttyT4"
MODE="0666"
KERNEL="tty[A-Z]*", SYSFS{serial}="FTCCGJQ8", SYMLINK="tty706",
MODE="0666"
KERNEL="tty[A-Z]*", SYSFS{serial}="FTCAA03O", SYMLINK="ttyWX",
MODE="0666"
KERNEL="tty[A-Z]*", SYSFS{serial}="FTCBXBA8", SYMLINK="ttytnc2",
MODE="0666"
KERNEL="tty[A-Z]*", SYSFS{serial}="FTC9S453", SYMLINK="ttytnc1",
MODE="0666"
KERNEL="tty[A-Z]*", SYSFS{serial}="FTCBX94P", SYMLINK="ttytnc0",
MODE="0666"
KERNEL=="tty[A-Z]*", SYSFS{serial}=="ftCCDAR5", SYMLINK="ttypsk",
MODE="0666"
KERNEL="tty[A-Z]*", DRIVER="pl2303", SYMLINK="tty756", MODE="0666"

On Sat, 2006-09-23 at 08:43 -0500, Richard, N6NKO wrote:
> There was a previous discussion on this topic concerning the issues of 
> USB/serial adapter port assignments and hotplug.
> 
> I may have a solution to the assignment issue. If you want to have 
> several port adapters on USB but always have them assigned to particular 
> ports, then buy a couple of adapters from different manufacturers so 
> each one is unique.  That should make the USB id unique also. Now write 
> a hotplug script that when it sees a particular ID come online to assign 
> the adapter to a specific /dev/? port.
> 
> 73 from 807,
> 
> Richard, N6NKO
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Xastir mailing list
> Xastir at xastir.org
> http://lists.xastir.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/xastir
-- 
William Gery - KA2FNK
Regional Systems Manager
National Weather Service
Central Region Headquarters
7220 NW 101st Terrace
Kansas City, MO 64153-2371