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Multi serial interface


max
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I installed an 8 serial / pci interface card.

It is recognized as "Oxford Semiconductor Ltd OX16PCI954 (Quad 16950 UART) function 0 (Uart)". And really, only four serials are available to the linux world.

Into xp the driver provided by the maker allows to use all the eight serials.

 

Now, I need to use the fifth serial into mandriva.

 

The instruction manual of the "Sunix" card, talks about a kernel patch and a kernel recompile for 2.6 kernels. I don't want to recompile the kernel as I'll must recompile on every kernel upgrade from now.

 

Perhaps, the right module is already included into the mandriva kernel, only I must know how is named. If it is compiled as module I could load it: a dream.

 

I would be very happy to share suggestions on that.

 

Massimo

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What kernel are you using right now:

 

uname -r

 

note that in Mandriva there are some kernel-linus which are right up-to-date and might have the correct module you need.

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I don't believe you're going to get all eight to work with the Mandriva kernels. It appears that you need the 8250 module compiled with several important kernel configuration options.

There are several important kernel configuration options to the

vanilla kernel's serial driver, in menuconfig they're all located

under "Extended 8250/16550 serial driver options":

 

SERIAL_8250_MANY_PORTS

= Support more than 4 legacy serial ports (enable this)

 

SERIAL_8250_SHARE_IRQ

= Support for sharing serial interrupts (enable this)

 

Then there are some table spacing entries:

 

CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_NR_UARTS

= Maximum number of 8250/16550 serial ports (default: 32)

 

CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_RUNTIME_UARTS

= Number of 8250/16550 serial ports to register at runtime (default: 4)

 

The first one is OK, 32 should be enough (unless you know that it's not).

Please note that the latter can be increased by a kernel command-line

parameter (or an insmod arg to serial.ko)

Quote from here.

 

So it looks like you need to do a bit of kernel/module work to get this working with Mandriva using its current mnb kernels.

 

If you really want this to work with all eight ports (and you don't mind using CentOS :)), according to this post, the normal CentOS kernel with the 8250 module is picking up all 8 serial ports correctly.

 

Please understand that I'm not trying to get you to switch distros. I'm simply showing you an alternative solution. :)

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