we need a new way to access serial ports

[William Hubbs]

On Sun, Jun 27, 2010 at 01:00:40PM -0500, Christopher Brannon wrote:
> > Is there any way you could open the port from kernel space as though you
> > were in user space and just write to it without taking exclusive
> > control?

You can't access "/dev/ttyS0" for example the same way from kernel space
that you do from user space.  The open(), read(), write() and close()
calls are for user space applications and we do not have access to them
inside the kernel.

To stay in kernel space, we need to convert to using the kernel's tty
layer to access serial synthesizers. It will take a complete rewrite of
the serial i/o routines to make this happen.

Also, we need access to devices some how from within the kernel in order
to use usb devices -- we need to be able to do the equivalent of
open("/dev/something"), which I do not know how to do at this point.

If anyone has any suggestions or patches to make this happen, they will
be most welcome.

Thanks,

William