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Date:      Wed, 30 Aug 1995 16:32:56 -0500 (CDT)
From:      Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com>
To:        bde@zeta.org.au (Bruce Evans)
Cc:        bde@zeta.org.au, peter@nmti.com, hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Gritching about XFree86 and serial port naming
Message-ID:  <199508302132.QAA05554@brasil.moneng.mei.com>
In-Reply-To: <199508302012.GAA20135@godzilla.zeta.org.au> from "Bruce Evans" at Aug 31, 95 06:12:36 am

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> >What's wrong with "ttya0" or "cuad0"?
> 
> "ttyd0" is not distinguishable from "cuad0" when truncated to 2 characters
> for printing by ps, etc. :-)

I would gladly trade that very minor bit of information in exchange for the
ability to name 32 serial ports in an easy-to-remember-and-translate
fashion.

In the process of setting up a BocaBoard 2016, I basically stopped in my
tracks when I hit the 13th port.

"Um.  Ok, if I was on ttydf, I should really go to ttye0, but then what do I
do with cuaaf, go to cuab0?"

I decided the naming convention was poor at best and decided to continue
running out through ttydj/cuaaj.  This could conceivably handle 32 ports but
it just looks silly, and it will need to be revamped in the future when
somebody modifies sio to handle 1024++ serial ports (it breaks at 37 ports,
which is NOT unthinkable!).

Personally I _WOULD_ like to see the tty naming start with tty00-0f,10-1f,
cua00-0f, etc.  Maintaining the current behaviour for ps's benefit is rather
shortsighted in my humble opinion because it *will* have to be broken at
some point.  ps will still give you a really good idea of which port a
process is involved with, you'll just have to be clever enough to decide
if "uucico" on "01" is either dial in or call out.  :-)

Is there anyone else besides me who is looking at putting lots of serial
ports on a BSD box, by the way?

... Joe

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joe Greco - Systems Administrator			      jgreco@ns.sol.net
Solaria Public Access UNIX - Milwaukee, WI			   414/342-4847



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