Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:09:24 +0200 From: John Hay <jhay@meraka.org.za> To: David Wolfskill <david@catwhisker.org>, current@freebsd.org, ed@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Apparent "permissions" issue with /dev/cuau0? Message-ID: <20081029060924.GA51480@zibbi.meraka.csir.co.za> In-Reply-To: <20081029050917.GQ69155@bunrab.catwhisker.org> References: <20081029050917.GQ69155@bunrab.catwhisker.org>
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On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 10:09:17PM -0700, David Wolfskill wrote:
> This seems a bit weird to me. I'll explain the context, then the
> perceived issue.
>
> I maintain a port (astro/gpsman) which can make use of a serial port to
> communicate with a GPS.
>
> The author of the program let me know earlier today that he had made a
> tarball of GPSman-6/4 available. Accordingly, I started updating the
> port to use the new version.
>
> While I was doing that, I noticed that there's a stanza in the port's
> Makefile:
>
> .if ${OSVERSION} < 600000
> GPSMAN_DEFAULT_PORT?= /dev/cuaa0
> .else
> GPSMAN_DEFAULT_PORT?= /dev/cuad0
> .endif
>
> and I recalled that the MPSAFE TTY layer was recently committed to HEAD,
> and that the serial device names changed accordingly. Thus, while it
> isn't actually essential (as the user can change the device name fairlly
> readily), I thought it would be reasonable to adjust that stanza so that
> folks installing GPSman on a recent CURRENT system would at least have a
> default value that matched something on their system.
>
> Accordingly, I changed my working copy to read:
>
> .if ${OSVERSION} < 600000
> GPSMAN_DEFAULT_PORT?= /dev/cuaa0
> .elif ${OSVERSION} < 800045
> GPSMAN_DEFAULT_PORT?= /dev/cuad0
> .else
> GPSMAN_DEFAULT_PORT?= /dev/cuau0
> .endif
>
> I then rebooted my laptop from the CURRENT slice and tried installing
> the (updated) port.
>
> The install was clean (as expected). I found that I needed to move my
> old ~/.gpsman directory aside; on invocation, gpsman offered to create
> ~/.gpsman-dir (where it stashes various preferences). I was mildly
> pleased to see that the default for the serial port showed up as
> /dev/cuau0 (as desired).
>
> I turned on my GPS, plugged it in, tried getting gpsman to talk to it,
> and got a complaint: GPSman said that I didn't have permission (I
> *think* that was its whine, anyway). I looked; the device was:
>
> crw-rw---- 1 uucp dialer 0, 51 Oct 28 20:23 /dev/cuau0
>
> and output of id(1) verified that I was in group "dialer" (specifically
> so I could do this type of thing), as expected.
>
>
> I then de-installed gpsman, rebooted the laptop to RELENG_6 (also built
> this morning), reinstalled GPSman, tried the "tallk tothe GPS"
> experiment again, and it worked just as it always had before -- no
> problems (using the "Garmin" protocol, if that matters).
>
> So: the hardware works. The physical connection should be OK. It seems
> to me that either there's Something Weird going on with access to
> things in a file namespace in CURRENT (which isn't all that likely, as
> it would probably have an adverrse effect on tracking CURRENT daily --
> and others would likely have been ... mentioning ... it) or GPSman is
> trying to do something to the serial port in a way that is no longer
> supported in CURRENT.
>
> Now, GPSman is a Tcl/Tk application. And as I'm not really sufficiently
> ambitious as to keep a separate set of installed ports ofr each of
> RELENG_6, RELENG_7, and HEAD, I set things up so that /usr/local is
> mounted from the same place regardless of which slice I boot from. I
> then maintain the ports while running RELENG_6 -- and on the other
> slices, I have the misc/compat6x port installed.
>
> While there are a few "gotchas" occasionally (RELENG_6 firefox isn't
> happy with CURRENT's threading model, though I could probably address
> that via /etc/libmap.conf), the vast mojority of stuff I use Just Works.
>
> FWIW, the version of the misc/compat6x port installed is
> compat6x-i386-6.4.604000.200810.
>
> I'm disinclined to believe that this is an issue with the 6.4 release of
> GPSman; as ssuch, I expect to send out the PR to update the port
> shortly. But it would be nicer if the software could be used under
> FreeBSD CURRENT. :-}
>
> I suppose I could try using ktrace(1) to get a better idea what's going
> on. Any other (better?) ideas?
Maybe the problem lies with tcl. We had to patch it before to handle
our serial ports (that was also for GPSman):
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2004-June/013797.html
John
--
John Hay -- John.Hay@meraka.csir.co.za / jhay@FreeBSD.org
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