Will USB serial ever be fixed?

Frank Mayhar frank at exit.com
Fri Sep 9 12:00:14 PDT 2005


On Fri, 2005-09-09 at 10:09 -0700, Paul Marciano wrote:
> I have a general question on the status of USB to
> serial support in FreeBSD (specifically the ucom and
> ftdi drivers).
> 
> I need an extra serial port on my system and for
> reasons outside the scope of this email I can't just
> plug in a PCI card.  I'm trying to use USB, but it
> seems that ucom is broken and no one is fixing it.
> 
> A tcflush() bug posted last year reports that USB
> serial ports hang on a call to tcflush().  This can be
> observed by using getty on one.
> 
> Another poster reported problems running PPP
> (including a kernel crash).

Well, I've got a handful of such devices that appear to work just fine.
Now, mine are based on the Prolific PL-2303* chips but you don't mention
any specific hardware.  All I know is that I'm using them for consoles
(and am  running getty on them) with no hangs or crashes of any kind.

I'm also pretty sure that if you could provide fixes (or at least better
characterization of the problems you're seeing), your concerns might be
more likely to be addressed.  As you know, this is an all-volunteer
effort.
-- 
Frank Mayhar frank at exit.com     http://www.exit.com/
Exit Consulting                 http://www.gpsclock.com/
                                http://www.exit.com/blog/frank/


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