[Wine] Serial Ports: busy?

[Martin Gregorie]

On Mon, 2009-09-21 at 15:48 -0500, driveoldford wrote:
> Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, it does not seem to be permissions problems.
> I tried exactly what you had suggested - no go. I have tried three different software packages - all w/ the same result - cannot access the com port.
> Anybody else having problems w/ serial ports in Wine?
> Thanks, FXS
> 
I forgot one thing, but AFAIK this is only important if you have more
than two serial ports.

If you have extra ports installed, Linux won't know they are there
unless you add this argument to the boot command:

	8250.nr_uarts=6

where the value '6' is the number of ports you have installed (I have 6:
the two on the mother board and another 4 on an PCI serial adapter
card). 

If you haven't added any serial cards, check the dmesg report (use
"dmesg | less") to make sure the kernel recognizes all the serial ports
it should. If there are missing ports, try using the '8250.nr_uarts=n'
kernel argument from GRUB's boot-time command prompt to see if it helps.
If it does, edit /boot/grub/grub.conf to make it permanent. Add it to
the default boot stanza (usually the first in the file) by adding it,
preceded by a space, to the end of the 'kernel' line. It will be
automatically copied to the new stanza each time there's a kernel
upgrade, but keep a record of it in a safe place since you'll have to
add it manually after a clean install.

The above assumes that you're using a genuine serial port (implemented
by an 8250 or 16550 chip on the mother board or an adapter card) and not
a USB serial adapter. Wine doesn't support USB serial adapters.


Martin