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So, I have a board with 6 hardware serial ports: the first 2 on the ETX bus and the last 4 on the ISA bus. The following configuration is how it is supposed to be:

/dev/ttyS0 port 0x03F8 irq 4
/dev/ttyS1 port 0x02F8 irq 3
/dev/ttyS2 port 0x0100 irq 5
/dev/ttyS3 port 0x0108 irq 5
/dev/ttyS4 port 0x0110 irq 5
/dev/ttyS5 port 0x0118 irq 5

On startup, I run:

# dmesg | egrep -i 'serial|ttys'
Serial: 8250/16550 driver, 6 ports, IRQ sharing enabled
serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
00:06: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
00:07: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A

# cat /proc/tty/driver/serial
Serinfo:1.0 driver revision:
0: uart:16550A port: 000003F8 irq:4 tx:0 rx:0
1: uart:16550A port: 000002F8 irq:3 tx:0 rx:0
2: uart:unknown port:000003E8 irq:4
3: uart:unknown port:000002E8 irq:3
4: uart:unknown port:00000000 irq:0
5: uart:unknown port:00000000 irq:0

So, I'm trying to use setserial to configure ports ttyS2-ttyS5 with the correct values:

# setserial /dev/ttyS2 irq 5 port 0x100 uart 16550A
# setserial /dev/ttyS3 irq 5 port 0x108 uart 16550A
# setserial /dev/ttyS4 irq 5 port 0x110 uart 16550A
Cannot set serial info: Invalid argument
# setserial /dev/ttyS5 irq 5 port 0x118 uart 16550A
Cannot set serial info: Invalid argument

Even taking out the uart option from the last command:

# setserial /dev/ttyS4 irq 5
Cannot set serial info: Invalid argument

What do I need to do to get ttyS4 and ttyS5 configured through setserial?

share|improve this question
Do you actually have 6 serials devices? Do you have a usbtoserial driver loaded? Can you provide some info on your hardware and drivers? – forcefsck Mar 18 '11 at 14:55
Edited my original post with additional info. – Ryan Mar 18 '11 at 15:00
Maybe you only see ports S2-S5. dmesg|egrep -i 'serial|ttys' output? – forcefsck Mar 18 '11 at 15:10
Updated my original post with the output from dmesg as well as some more information – Ryan Mar 18 '11 at 16:07
are you sure that the UART controller for other 4 ports is also 16550A ? – Mr.Confused.A.Lot Apr 14 '11 at 13:24

3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

A couple of things strike me about what I see in your /proc and dmesg output:

  • You shouldn't try to share an IRQ between devices. It may work, but the intention with ISA is that each device on the bus that needs an interrupt line to work gets its own IRQ. If your serial port cards don't give you enough IRQ options, you may simply not be able to use them all together in that PC.

  • The I/O addresses you are using for the second pair of serial ports are nonstandard. ttyS2 is normally at 0x3E8 and ttyS3 is normally at 0x2E8. I would move those if you have that option with the serial card. (There are no standard I/O addresses or IRQs for ttyS4 and up.)

Aside from all that, if I needed 6 serial ports on a Linux box, I wouldn't try to use plain old serial port adapter cards. I would use something like a Digi AccelePort. They still offer one that will work in your ISA slots, the Xe model. If you need cheap, you should be able to find one floating around on the used market; they were very popular back in the day.

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Updated my original post with the output from cat as well as some more information – Ryan Mar 18 '11 at 16:07
I'm using an embedded board. By ISA bus I didn't mean a physical ISA card but rather a quad serial controller hardwired on the board. I don't understand why S2 and S3 need to use nonstandard addresses but that was what I was told from a tech to use for those COMs. – Ryan Mar 18 '11 at 17:10
In that case, I would ask on electronics.stackexchange.com whether anyone has run Linux on that particular board and gotten it to see all 6 serial ports. I doubt your problem is actually Linux here, but rather the hardware. If so, your question is not on topic. – Warren Young Mar 18 '11 at 17:28
up vote 0 down vote

Try adding 8250.nr_uarts=6 or nr_uarts=6 in your kernel boot parameters.

Edit: Some info that might help (hopefully).

share|improve this answer
Well, I already had CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_RUNTIME_UARTS set to 6 in my kernel config, but I tried both of these (separately) as a boot parameter and it had no effect to what I'm seeing. – Ryan Mar 18 '11 at 16:46
There is also CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_NR_UARTS, but according to documentation this should be overridden by 8250.nr_uarts parameter. v0v – forcefsck Mar 18 '11 at 17:07
Actually according to the help in 2.6.37 kernel config, CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_RUNTIME_UARTS corresponds to the number of serial ports the kernel will register at boot time and can be overridden by the boot time parameter "8250.nr_uarts". CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_NR_UARTS is the number of serial ports I want the 8250 driver to support (maximum). In my kernel config CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_NR_UARTS=32 and CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_RUNTIME_UARTS=6 – Ryan Mar 18 '11 at 17:19
up vote 0 down vote

Try to use the baud_rate 115200 parameter for setserial

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