[Xastir] Error opening interface 0 Hard Fail

[Mike Swiatkowski, AA9VI]

What causes "Interface Error! Error opening interface 0 Hard Fail"?

First, I run Debain 6. I recently had to reinstall some serial port drivers for a Moschip 9865 PCI card and when I restarted Xastir all hell broke lose.  The program locked up and would not start.  Then I killed the ./xastir/xastir.cnf files and it started.  As soon as I loaded the /dev/ttyD0 (the 9865 serial ports) the program locked up again.  I confirmed the 9865 has proper user access.  It works in minicom just fine.  It does not work in Xastir.  Any ideas?  I have blown away the cutting edge 2.0.1 and tried 1.9.4 latest stable from Debian with no success.  I tried all kids of permissions on the serial ports even 777, no success.  I even did that chmod 4755 on the /usr/local/bin/xastir directory with no success.  What's really odd is that when I try and add the serial port name to the Interface Control and select serial TNC (for TNC) or Serial WX (for my Ultimeter 2100) that the device name default is "none."  I thought the default used
 to be something like /dev/ttyS0 or something like that.

Any hints would be helpful.  I wasted 2 days on something that is probably simple (or maybe not?).

Thanks,
Mike, AA9VI