Kernel does not see my serial port [SOLVED]

omschaub · Last edited by omschaub on Sat Sep 04, 2004 3:12 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hello all.. I have just switched to Gentoo from SUSE.. and might I say, that on my AMD64 system, Gentoo rolls up SUSE like a little cigarette and smokes it

After 1 week of learning linux for real (installing Gentoo), I have gotten everything to work really well.. and I am very happy and here to stay. After the installation, I remembered that I had an old WACOM ArtPad II lying around and I was wondering if I could get that to work. This pad plugs into the serial port of my computer. Unfortunately, either because of my stupidity (likely answer) or other factors, the kernel does not see my serial port at all. I marvel at my searches on this forum that reveal most people actually have a /dev/ called ttyS0 .. I want that

Here is what I have tried:

1. I rebooted my computer and set up my serial port (first I tried "auto" then I set it manually to 3F8/IRQ4)
2. I am not quite ready for self-modified kernels, so I used the genkernel --menuconfig all feature. I went through all that I saw and enabled all with the word "serial"
3. I reboot and looked through the dmesg and there is no mention of the word serial at all
4. I still do not see a /dev/ttySx
5. I tried to restart the /etc/init.d/serial that did nothing

I know that this is trivial and easy to fix since Serial ports have been in use since the very first kernel.

I am surprised, however, that genkernel does not, by default, activate the serial ports.. I have both of mine turned on in the bios and neither of them are showing up.

I would really appreciate any help as I would like to get my tablet working. Thanks

mrness · Posted: Sat Sep 04, 2004 1:36 pm Post subject:

what do you use? udev or devfsd?
maybe you build your serial driver as a module? if that's the case, you should put the name of the module in /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.$x

omschaub · Posted: Sat Sep 04, 2004 2:06 pm Post subject:

Thanks mrness for the reply

I am not very up on this low level stuff in linux, but my system has devfsd 1.3.25-r6 installed.

Is there some advantage to compiling as a module instead of built into the kernel? I understand for risky, experimental drivers and things that are not needed all the time, but something as basic as a serial port seems to need to be on all the time. For example, I have the parallel port driving a LCD monitor.. that is hard built into the kernel and works great.

BTW.. my system is using kernel 2.6.7-r14 on AMD64 2004.2

Thanks again and ANY help is greatly appreciated.

mrness · Posted: Sat Sep 04, 2004 2:25 pm Post subject:

well, there is a simple mode to determine if you have serial driver built in or as a module: run modprobe 8250. if it succeeds it means you have build as a module, so you need to add

omschaub · Posted: Sat Sep 04, 2004 3:12 pm Post subject:

AHA!!! that got it... thank you so much..

who knew that Serial Port == 8250
Must be some 'old school nomenclature' :roll:

Again.. thanks!

mrness · Posted: Sat Sep 04, 2004 4:36 pm Post subject:

not exactly. as many linux drivers, it borrows the name from the first controller chip model for which was created (e.g. rtl8139)

btw, when you issue a make menuconfig|xconfig pay attention on what it asks you; from Help button you could learn valuable information, such as driver's name for instance