Linux Network Administrator's Guide, Second Edition

Accessing Serial Devices

Like all devices in a Unix system, serial ports are accessed through device special files, located in the /dev directory. There are two varieties of device files related to serial drivers, and there is one device file of each type for each port. The device will behave slightly differently, depending on which of its device files we open. We’ll cover the differences because it will help you understand some of the configurations and advice that you might see relating to serial devices, but in practice you need to use only one of these. At some point in the future, one of them may even disappear completely.

The most important of the two classes of serial device has a major number of 4, and its device special files are named ttyS0, ttyS1, etc. The second variety has a major number of 5, and was designed for use when dialing out (calling out) through a port; its device special files are called cua0, cua1, etc. In the Unix world, counting generally starts at zero, while laypeople tend to start at one. This creates a small amount of confusion for people because COM1: is represented by /dev/ttyS0, COM2: by /dev/ttyS1, etc. Anyone familiar with IBM PC-style hardware knows that COM3: and greater were never really standardized anyway.

The cua, or “callout,” devices were created to solve the problem of avoiding conflicts on serial devices for modems that have to support both incoming and outgoing connections. Unfortunately, they’ve created their own problems and ...