Create Null Modem Pair linux

Question

I am looking to create virtual serial ports on Debian 6 squeeze. Basic requirements are:

1. be able to connect as if port was a real serial port( IE be able to set baud, stop bits etc)

2. com port pairs need to be persistent

3. com port pairs names must be static on reboot. I don't want to change code settings each time computer is rebooted

I briefly tried socat today using socat -d -d pty, raw, echo=1 pty, raw, echo=1 that successfully created /dev/pts/5 and /dev/pts/6 as a pair. However soon as I close the terminal running socat the pair is terminated. I am also wondering if tty0tty is an option? I have used com0com in the past with windows with great success.

My question is what is the best way to create a null modem pair so that I can simulate several com ports in Linux?

Answer 1

If you close the terminal you will also kill socat.

Try running it with

socat -d -d pty, raw, echo=1 pty, raw, echo=1 &
disown

Then you should be able to close the terminal

Answer 2

Stop bits only exist if you have an actual UART so there's nothing there to simulate. Baud rate is simply the upper limit on how fast you can transfer data, so when you are writing your simulation program, you simply have it limit its data rate to the appropriate speed. Then you can connect the simulator to the consuming program with a plain old pipe or fifo.

There is no reason to bother with a pseudo tty since they don't actually do anything with the baud rate and other parameters, they just pass it on for backward compatibility.

Answer 3

I am thinking this solution will not be "persistent" however names will be static even though they are symbolic. socat will continue to run after terminal is closed thanks to Kotte's answer

socat -d -d PTY,link=/home/someuser/COM0 PTY,link=/home/someuser/COM1 & disown