1.1. Copyright Information

This document is copyrighted (c) 1997 Peter Baumann, (c) 2001 Gary Frerking and is distributed under the terms of the Linux Documentation Project (LDP) license, stated below.

Unless otherwise stated, Linux HOWTO documents are copyrighted by their respective authors. Linux HOWTO documents may be reproduced and distributed in whole or in part, in any medium physical or electronic, as long as this copyright notice is retained on all copies. Commercial redistribution is allowed and encouraged; however, the author would like to be notified of any such distributions.

All translations, derivative works, or aggregate works incorporating any Linux HOWTO documents must be covered under this copyright notice. That is, you may not produce a derivative work from a HOWTO and impose additional restrictions on its distribution. Exceptions to these rules may be granted under certain conditions; please contact the Linux HOWTO coordinator at the address given below.

In short, we wish to promote dissemination of this information through as many channels as possible. However, we do wish to retain copyright on the HOWTO documents, and would like to be notified of any plans to redistribute the HOWTOs.

If you have any questions, please contact <linux-howto@metalab.unc.edu>

1.2. Disclaimer

No liability for the contents of this documents can be accepted. Use the concepts, examples and other content at your own risk. As this is a new edition of this document, there may be errors and inaccuracies, that may of course be damaging to your system. Proceed with caution, and although this is highly unlikely, the author(s) do not take any responsibility for that.

All copyrights are held by their by their respective owners, unless specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.

Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements.

You are strongly recommended to take a backup of your system before major installation and backups at regular intervals.

1.3. New Versions

As previously mentioned, not much is new in terms of technical content yet.

1.4. Credits

The original author thanked Mr. Strudthoff, Michael Carter, Peter Waltenberg, Antonino Ianella, Greg Hankins, Dave Pfaltzgraff, Sean Lincolne, Michael Wiedmann, and Adrey Bonar.

1.5. Feedback

Feedback is most certainly welcome for this document. Without your submissions and input, this document wouldn't exist. Please send your additions, comments and criticisms to the following email address : <gary@frerking.org>.

2.1. Debugging

The best way to debug your code is to set up another Linux box, and connect the two computers via a null-modem cable. Use miniterm (available from the LDP programmers guide (ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/docs/LDP/programmers-guide/lpg-0.4.tar.gz in the examples directory) to transmit characters to your Linux box. Miniterm can be compiled very easily and will transmit all keyboard input raw over the serial port. Only the define statement #define MODEMDEVICE "/dev/ttyS0" has to be checked. Set it to ttyS0 for COM1, ttyS1 for COM2, etc.. It is essential for testing, that all characters are transmitted raw (without output processing) over the line. To test your connection, start miniterm on both computers and just type away. The characters input on one computer should appear on the other computer and vice versa. The input will not be echoed to the attached screen.

To make a null-modem cable you have to cross the TxD (transmit) and RxD (receive) lines. For a description of a cable see sect. 7 of the Serial-HOWTO.

It is also possible to perform this testing with only one computer, if you have two unused serial ports. You can then run two miniterms off two virtual consoles. If you free a serial port by disconnecting the mouse, remember to redirect /dev/mouse if it exists. If you use a multiport serial card, be sure to configure it correctly. I had mine configured wrong and everything worked fine as long as I was testing only on my computer. When I connected to another computer, the port started loosing characters. Executing two programs on one computer just isn't fully asynchronous.

2.2. Port Settings

The devices /dev/ttyS* are intended to hook up terminals to your Linux box, and are configured for this use after startup. This has to be kept in mind when programming communication with a raw device. E.g. the ports are configured to echo characters sent from the device back to it, which normally has to be changed for data transmission.

All parameters can be easily configured from within a program. The configuration is stored in a structure struct termios, which is defined in <asm/termbits.h>:

#define NCCS 19 struct termios { tcflag_t c_iflag; /* input mode flags */ tcflag_t c_oflag; /* output mode flags */ tcflag_t c_cflag; /* control mode flags */ tcflag_t c_lflag; /* local mode flags */ cc_t c_line; /* line discipline */ cc_t c_cc[NCCS]; /* control characters */ };

This file also includes all flag definitions. The input mode flags in c_iflag handle all input processing, which means that the characters sent from the device can be processed before they are read with read. Similarly c_oflag handles the output processing. c_cflag contains the settings for the port, as the baudrate, bits per character, stop bits, etc.. The local mode flags stored in c_lflag determine if characters are echoed, signals are sent to your program, etc.. Finally the array c_cc defines the control characters for end of file, stop, etc.. Default values for the control characters are defined in <asm/termios.h>. The flags are described in the manual page termios(3). The structure termios contains the c_line (line discipline) element, which is not used in POSIX compliant systems.

2.3. Input Concepts for Serial Devices

Here three different input concepts will be presented. The appropriate concept has to be chosen for the intended application. Whenever possible, do not loop reading single characters to get a complete string. When I did this, I lost characters, whereas a read for the whole string did not show any errors.

3.1. Canonical Input Processing

#include <sys/types.h> #include <sys/stat.h> #include <fcntl.h> #include <termios.h> #include <stdio.h> /* baudrate settings are defined in <asm/termbits.h>, which is included by <termios.h> */ #define BAUDRATE B38400 /* change this definition for the correct port */ #define MODEMDEVICE "/dev/ttyS1" #define _POSIX_SOURCE 1 /* POSIX compliant source */ #define FALSE 0 #define TRUE 1 volatile int STOP=FALSE; main() { int fd,c, res; struct termios oldtio,newtio; char buf[255]; /* Open modem device for reading and writing and not as controlling tty because we don't want to get killed if linenoise sends CTRL-C. */ fd = open(MODEMDEVICE, O_RDWR | O_NOCTTY ); if (fd <0) {perror(MODEMDEVICE); exit(-1); } tcgetattr(fd,&oldtio); /* save current serial port settings */ bzero(&newtio, sizeof(newtio)); /* clear struct for new port settings */ /* BAUDRATE: Set bps rate. You could also use cfsetispeed and cfsetospeed. CRTSCTS : output hardware flow control (only used if the cable has all necessary lines. See sect. 7 of Serial-HOWTO) CS8 : 8n1 (8bit,no parity,1 stopbit) CLOCAL : local connection, no modem contol CREAD : enable receiving characters */ newtio.c_cflag = BAUDRATE | CRTSCTS | CS8 | CLOCAL | CREAD; /* IGNPAR : ignore bytes with parity errors ICRNL : map CR to NL (otherwise a CR input on the other computer will not terminate input) otherwise make device raw (no other input processing) */ newtio.c_iflag = IGNPAR | ICRNL; /* Raw output. */ newtio.c_oflag = 0; /* ICANON : enable canonical input disable all echo functionality, and don't send signals to calling program */ newtio.c_lflag = ICANON; /* initialize all control characters default values can be found in /usr/include/termios.h, and are given in the comments, but we don't need them here */ newtio.c_cc[VINTR] = 0; /* Ctrl-c */ newtio.c_cc[VQUIT] = 0; /* Ctrl-\ */ newtio.c_cc[VERASE] = 0; /* del */ newtio.c_cc[VKILL] = 0; /* @ */ newtio.c_cc[VEOF] = 4; /* Ctrl-d */ newtio.c_cc[VTIME] = 0; /* inter-character timer unused */ newtio.c_cc[VMIN] = 1; /* blocking read until 1 character arrives */ newtio.c_cc[VSWTC] = 0; /* '\0' */ newtio.c_cc[VSTART] = 0; /* Ctrl-q */ newtio.c_cc[VSTOP] = 0; /* Ctrl-s */ newtio.c_cc[VSUSP] = 0; /* Ctrl-z */ newtio.c_cc[VEOL] = 0; /* '\0' */ newtio.c_cc[VREPRINT] = 0; /* Ctrl-r */ newtio.c_cc[VDISCARD] = 0; /* Ctrl-u */ newtio.c_cc[VWERASE] = 0; /* Ctrl-w */ newtio.c_cc[VLNEXT] = 0; /* Ctrl-v */ newtio.c_cc[VEOL2] = 0; /* '\0' */ /* now clean the modem line and activate the settings for the port */ tcflush(fd, TCIFLUSH); tcsetattr(fd,TCSANOW,&newtio); /* terminal settings done, now handle input In this example, inputting a 'z' at the beginning of a line will exit the program. */ while (STOP==FALSE) { /* loop until we have a terminating condition */ /* read blocks program execution until a line terminating character is input, even if more than 255 chars are input. If the number of characters read is smaller than the number of chars available, subsequent reads will return the remaining chars. res will be set to the actual number of characters actually read */ res = read(fd,buf,255); buf[res]=0; /* set end of string, so we can printf */ printf(":%s:%d\n", buf, res); if (buf[0]=='z') STOP=TRUE; } /* restore the old port settings */ tcsetattr(fd,TCSANOW,&oldtio); }

3.2. Non-Canonical Input Processing

In non-canonical input processing mode, input is not assembled into lines and input processing (erase, kill, delete, etc.) does not occur. Two parameters control the behavior of this mode: c_cc[VTIME] sets the character timer, and c_cc[VMIN] sets the minimum number of characters to receive before satisfying the read.

If MIN > 0 and TIME = 0, MIN sets the number of characters to receive before the read is satisfied. As TIME is zero, the timer is not used.

If MIN = 0 and TIME > 0, TIME serves as a timeout value. The read will be satisfied if a single character is read, or TIME is exceeded (t = TIME *0.1 s). If TIME is exceeded, no character will be returned.

If MIN > 0 and TIME > 0, TIME serves as an inter-character timer. The read will be satisfied if MIN characters are received, or the time between two characters exceeds TIME. The timer is restarted every time a character is received and only becomes active after the first character has been received.

If MIN = 0 and TIME = 0, read will be satisfied immediately. The number of characters currently available, or the number of characters requested will be returned. According to Antonino (see contributions), you could issue a fcntl(fd, F_SETFL, FNDELAY); before reading to get the same result.

By modifying newtio.c_cc[VTIME] and newtio.c_cc[VMIN] all modes described above can be tested.

#include <sys/types.h> #include <sys/stat.h> #include <fcntl.h> #include <termios.h> #include <stdio.h> #define BAUDRATE B38400 #define MODEMDEVICE "/dev/ttyS1" #define _POSIX_SOURCE 1 /* POSIX compliant source */ #define FALSE 0 #define TRUE 1 volatile int STOP=FALSE; main() { int fd,c, res; struct termios oldtio,newtio; char buf[255]; fd = open(MODEMDEVICE, O_RDWR | O_NOCTTY ); if (fd <0) {perror(MODEMDEVICE); exit(-1); } tcgetattr(fd,&oldtio); /* save current port settings */ bzero(&newtio, sizeof(newtio)); newtio.c_cflag = BAUDRATE | CRTSCTS | CS8 | CLOCAL | CREAD; newtio.c_iflag = IGNPAR; newtio.c_oflag = 0; /* set input mode (non-canonical, no echo,...) */ newtio.c_lflag = 0; newtio.c_cc[VTIME] = 0; /* inter-character timer unused */ newtio.c_cc[VMIN] = 5; /* blocking read until 5 chars received */ tcflush(fd, TCIFLUSH); tcsetattr(fd,TCSANOW,&newtio); while (STOP==FALSE) { /* loop for input */ res = read(fd,buf,255); /* returns after 5 chars have been input */ buf[res]=0; /* so we can printf... */ printf(":%s:%d\n", buf, res); if (buf[0]=='z') STOP=TRUE; } tcsetattr(fd,TCSANOW,&oldtio); }

3.3. Asynchronous Input

#include <termios.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <unistd.h> #include <fcntl.h> #include <sys/signal.h> #include <sys/types.h> #define BAUDRATE B38400 #define MODEMDEVICE "/dev/ttyS1" #define _POSIX_SOURCE 1 /* POSIX compliant source */ #define FALSE 0 #define TRUE 1 volatile int STOP=FALSE; void signal_handler_IO (int status); /* definition of signal handler */ int wait_flag=TRUE; /* TRUE while no signal received */ main() { int fd,c, res; struct termios oldtio,newtio; struct sigaction saio; /* definition of signal action */ char buf[255]; /* open the device to be non-blocking (read will return immediatly) */ fd = open(MODEMDEVICE, O_RDWR | O_NOCTTY | O_NONBLOCK); if (fd <0) {perror(MODEMDEVICE); exit(-1); } /* install the signal handler before making the device asynchronous */ saio.sa_handler = signal_handler_IO; saio.sa_mask = 0; saio.sa_flags = 0; saio.sa_restorer = NULL; sigaction(SIGIO,&saio,NULL); /* allow the process to receive SIGIO */ fcntl(fd, F_SETOWN, getpid()); /* Make the file descriptor asynchronous (the manual page says only O_APPEND and O_NONBLOCK, will work with F_SETFL...) */ fcntl(fd, F_SETFL, FASYNC); tcgetattr(fd,&oldtio); /* save current port settings */ /* set new port settings for canonical input processing */ newtio.c_cflag = BAUDRATE | CRTSCTS | CS8 | CLOCAL | CREAD; newtio.c_iflag = IGNPAR | ICRNL; newtio.c_oflag = 0; newtio.c_lflag = ICANON; newtio.c_cc[VMIN]=1; newtio.c_cc[VTIME]=0; tcflush(fd, TCIFLUSH); tcsetattr(fd,TCSANOW,&newtio); /* loop while waiting for input. normally we would do something useful here */ while (STOP==FALSE) { printf(".\n");usleep(100000); /* after receiving SIGIO, wait_flag = FALSE, input is available and can be read */ if (wait_flag==FALSE) { res = read(fd,buf,255); buf[res]=0; printf(":%s:%d\n", buf, res); if (res==1) STOP=TRUE; /* stop loop if only a CR was input */ wait_flag = TRUE; /* wait for new input */ } } /* restore old port settings */ tcsetattr(fd,TCSANOW,&oldtio); } /*************************************************************************** * signal handler. sets wait_flag to FALSE, to indicate above loop that * * characters have been received. * ***************************************************************************/ void signal_handler_IO (int status) { printf("received SIGIO signal.\n"); wait_flag = FALSE; }

3.4. Waiting for Input from Multiple Sources

This section is kept to a minimum. It is just intended to be a hint, and therefore the example code is kept short. This will not only work with serial ports, but with any set of file descriptors.

The select call and accompanying macros use a fd_set. This is a bit array, which has a bit entry for every valid file descriptor number. select will accept a fd_set with the bits set for the relevant file descriptors and returns a fd_set, in which the bits for the file descriptors are set where input, output, or an exception occurred. All handling of fd_set is done with the provided macros. See also the manual page select(2).

#include <sys/time.h> #include <sys/types.h> #include <unistd.h> main() { int fd1, fd2; /* input sources 1 and 2 */ fd_set readfs; /* file descriptor set */ int maxfd; /* maximum file desciptor used */ int loop=1; /* loop while TRUE */ /* open_input_source opens a device, sets the port correctly, and returns a file descriptor */ fd1 = open_input_source("/dev/ttyS1"); /* COM2 */ if (fd1<0) exit(0); fd2 = open_input_source("/dev/ttyS2"); /* COM3 */ if (fd2<0) exit(0); maxfd = MAX (fd1, fd2)+1; /* maximum bit entry (fd) to test */ /* loop for input */ while (loop) { FD_SET(fd1, &readfs); /* set testing for source 1 */ FD_SET(fd2, &readfs); /* set testing for source 2 */ /* block until input becomes available */ select(maxfd, &readfs, NULL, NULL, NULL); if (FD_ISSET(fd1)) /* input from source 1 available */ handle_input_from_source1(); if (FD_ISSET(fd2)) /* input from source 2 available */ handle_input_from_source2(); } }

The given example blocks indefinitely, until input from one of the sources becomes available. If you need to timeout on input, just replace the select call by:

int res; struct timeval Timeout; /* set timeout value within input loop */ Timeout.tv_usec = 0; /* milliseconds */ Timeout.tv_sec = 1; /* seconds */ res = select(maxfd, &readfs, NULL, NULL, &Timeout); if (res==0) /* number of file descriptors with input = 0, timeout occurred. */

This example will timeout after 1 second. If a timeout occurs, select will return 0, but beware that Timeout is decremented by the time actually waited for input by select. If the timeout value is zero, select will return immediatly.