Hello Daniel, Daniel D Streetman [2009-06-03 10:48 -0400]: > Well that is the problem, isn't it? With serial ports there is absolutely > nothing to go on to tell what physical port it is except for numbering.
Right, that might be more tricky. I actually can't test it here, it's been a long time since I had a machine with a real serial port. > Well, I don't think this will work as the problem isn't consistent naming - > serial ports are not added/removed and so there is no danger of > inconsistent numbering I wouldn't rely too much on it. Ethernet cards aren't added/removed either, and yet without the persistency rules they get a pretty much random order on boot. I guess the ordering is more reliable for serial ports since they are all covered by the same driver (unlike the two ethernet cards I used to have). > I could create permanent "persistent naming" rules such as the above one to > correctly number the ports, but I don't think that is what you mean - you > mean I should create a dynamic rule to create those persistent naming rules > on-the-fly as serial ports are (first) detected. That is what you mean > right? Not really on the fly, just attaching the name to a physical attribute which stays constant across reboots. If there is none, then I guess you can keep your current rules which just rename the interfaces. > Also to clarify, I'm not looking to create a rule for just my system - I am > trying to create a permanent rule that I can upstream into a common > repository that all distributions can draw from so the various quirks on > these systems can be correctly handled by all distributions. Right, I understood your intention, but I don't think we want arbitrary renaming like that, since they are going to have a different effect on every machine anyway, and one order is as good as the other usually. > With serial ports? How can an application not rely on the serial port > number? For other types of interfaces, USB devices, ethernet interfaces, > displays, whatever - I can understand that. But ever since serial ports > were invented, the port number is the one and only thing the application > can use. Right? Right, that's true. Probably one of the reasons why they are considered "legacy". Usually, when there is a device on a port, there is often a way to probe that device instead of the port it is attached to (which is what you actually want in most cases). That needs an external probe program with RUN/IMPORT, and is very specific to the type of hardware you attach. > For PCI-card based serial ports, there are no other device properties > besides the PCI address and kernel-assigned name. The PCI device should have an unique physical slot name (PCI_SLOT_NAME), but that won't help you, since I guess one PCI device drives all of your serial ports? So I think you should either locally keep your current renaming, or perhaps just swap the stickers to have the correct number :) Martin -- Martin Pitt | http://www.piware.de Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com) | Debian Developer (www.debian.org) _______________________________________________ devkit-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/devkit-devel
