From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Sep 9 17:09:45 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8F4C516A420 for ; Fri, 9 Sep 2005 17:09:45 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from pm940@yahoo.com) Received: from web54002.mail.yahoo.com (web54002.mail.yahoo.com [206.190.36.226]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id DD03F43D48 for ; Fri, 9 Sep 2005 17:09:44 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from pm940@yahoo.com) Received: (qmail 77244 invoked by uid 60001); 9 Sep 2005 17:09:44 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=s1024; d=yahoo.com; h=Message-ID:Received:Date:From:Subject:To:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding; b=ZoB8xpfO7tVbN58GCYU9uzpI2BxlkeYYg6+4NKuH8oG+Qaer1EPpw3RVkVMusRvRpLZES1vHEGWhs2h8bk9bii5v/i/V/F6G7MhJW0I6SqTcO7dzAlPmIVtmv4tANawOIh7fPSiMG2UMl3G41cQ4109ot5H2uNPs3jqj4ueXBfE= ; Message-ID: <20050909170944.77242.qmail@web54002.mail.yahoo.com> Received: from [69.237.122.17] by web54002.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP; Fri, 09 Sep 2005 10:09:43 PDT Date: Fri, 9 Sep 2005 10:09:43 -0700 (PDT) From: Paul Marciano To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, freebsd-usb@freebsd.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Cc: Subject: Will USB serial ever be fixed? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 09 Sep 2005 17:09:45 -0000 I have a general question on the status of USB to serial support in FreeBSD (specifically the ucom and ftdi drivers). I need an extra serial port on my system and for reasons outside the scope of this email I can't just plug in a PCI card. I'm trying to use USB, but it seems that ucom is broken and no one is fixing it. A tcflush() bug posted last year reports that USB serial ports hang on a call to tcflush(). This can be observed by using getty on one. Another poster reported problems running PPP (including a kernel crash). Given the lack of movement in these bugs, it looks like the FreeBSD developers don't care about ucom... certainly not enough to fix it. Now I could get up on a soapbox and say how unacceptable it is for a fundamental peripheral like serial ports (even though they're over USB) to be so obviously broken for so long... but I won't, because I'm not a developer and I understand that it's a volunteer thing and overall FreeBSD is otherwise excellent. So without wanting to offend (whilst secretly being pretty frustrated with the corner I find myself in) I would like to know, hopefully from someone responsible for the subsystem, if ucom/ftdi is likely to be fixed in the next six months. Sigh. I really don't want to have to move to Linux for something this small, but USB serial is a system component I can't change. Be honest. Be brutal. I need to know where FreeBSD stands on this. Thanks, Paul. ______________________________________________________ Click here to donate to the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. http://store.yahoo.com/redcross-donate3/