Ubuntu – How to access all 8 serial ports on the 8-port serial PCI card

pciserial portUbuntuudev

I have installed an 8-port PCI based serial card from Sunix in my Ubuntu PC.

A probe through lspci -v shows the following:

03:02.0 Multiport serial controller: SUNIX Co., Ltd. Multiport serial controller
        Subsystem: SUNIX Co., Ltd. Multiport serial controller
        Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 18
        I/O ports at 2100 [size=32]
        I/O ports at 2000 [size=256]
        I/O ports at 2120 [size=16]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: serial

Also, the following is the output of ls /dev/ttyS*:

/dev/ttyS0   /dev/ttyS11  /dev/ttyS14  /dev/ttyS17  /dev/ttyS2   /dev/ttyS22  /dev/ttyS25  /dev/ttyS28  /dev/ttyS30  /dev/ttyS5  /dev/ttyS8
/dev/ttyS1   /dev/ttyS12  /dev/ttyS15  /dev/ttyS18  /dev/ttyS20  /dev/ttyS23  /dev/ttyS26  /dev/ttyS29  /dev/ttyS31  /dev/ttyS6  /dev/ttyS9
/dev/ttyS10  /dev/ttyS13  /dev/ttyS16  /dev/ttyS19  /dev/ttyS21  /dev/ttyS24  /dev/ttyS27  /dev/ttyS3   /dev/ttyS4   /dev/ttyS7

Now, I was expecting any of the above 8 to be my serial port devices and set to figure out which using the udevadm utility as follows:

udevadm info -a -p $(udevadm info -q path -n /dev/ttyS<0-31>)

And strangely, there are not 8, but just a single port (/dev/ttyS5) which can be accessed. Only 2 among the 32 (0-31, yeah, I actually probed each one of them!) were detected with a SUBSYSTEMS=="pci" attribute; udevadm info -a -p $(udevadm info -q path -n /dev/ttyS4) gives the following output:

looking at device '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:16.3/tty/ttyS4':
    KERNEL=="ttyS4"
    SUBSYSTEM=="tty"
    DRIVER==""

looking at parent device '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:16.3':
    KERNELS=="0000:00:16.3"
    SUBSYSTEMS=="pci"
    DRIVERS=="serial"
    ATTRS{broken_parity_status}=="0"
    ATTRS{class}=="0x070002"
    ATTRS{consistent_dma_mask_bits}=="32"
    ATTRS{d3cold_allowed}=="1"
    ATTRS{device}=="0x1c3d"
    ATTRS{dma_mask_bits}=="32"
    ATTRS{driver_override}=="(null)"
    ATTRS{enable}=="1"
    ATTRS{irq}=="17"
    ATTRS{local_cpulist}=="0-7"
    ATTRS{local_cpus}=="00ff"
    ATTRS{msi_bus}=="1"
    ATTRS{numa_node}=="-1"
    ATTRS{subsystem_device}=="0x047e"
    ATTRS{subsystem_vendor}=="0x1028"
    ATTRS{vendor}=="0x8086"

looking at parent device '/devices/pci0000:00':
    KERNELS=="pci0000:00"
    SUBSYSTEMS==""
    DRIVERS==""

and udevadm info -a -p $(udevadm info -q path -n /dev/ttyS5) gives the following output:

looking at device '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1e.0/0000:03:02.0/tty/ttyS5':
  KERNEL=="ttyS5"
  SUBSYSTEM=="tty"
  DRIVER==""

looking at parent device '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1e.0/0000:03:02.0':
  KERNELS=="0000:03:02.0"
  SUBSYSTEMS=="pci"
  DRIVERS=="serial"
  ATTRS{broken_parity_status}=="0"
  ATTRS{class}=="0x070200"
  ATTRS{consistent_dma_mask_bits}=="32"
  ATTRS{d3cold_allowed}=="1"
  ATTRS{device}=="0x1999"
  ATTRS{dma_mask_bits}=="32"
  ATTRS{driver_override}=="(null)"
  ATTRS{enable}=="1"
  ATTRS{irq}=="18"
  ATTRS{local_cpulist}=="0-7"
  ATTRS{local_cpus}=="00ff"
  ATTRS{msi_bus}=="1"
  ATTRS{numa_node}=="-1"
  ATTRS{subsystem_device}=="0x0008"
  ATTRS{subsystem_vendor}=="0x1fd4"
  ATTRS{vendor}=="0x1fd4"

looking at parent device '/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1e.0':
  KERNELS=="0000:00:1e.0"
  SUBSYSTEMS=="pci"
  DRIVERS==""
  ATTRS{broken_parity_status}=="0"
  ATTRS{class}=="0x060401"
  ATTRS{consistent_dma_mask_bits}=="32"
  ATTRS{d3cold_allowed}=="0"
  ATTRS{device}=="0x244e"
  ATTRS{dma_mask_bits}=="32"
  ATTRS{driver_override}=="(null)"
  ATTRS{enable}=="1"
  ATTRS{irq}=="0"
  ATTRS{local_cpulist}=="0-7"
  ATTRS{local_cpus}=="00ff"
  ATTRS{msi_bus}=="1"
  ATTRS{numa_node}=="-1"
  ATTRS{subsystem_device}=="0x047e"
  ATTRS{subsystem_vendor}=="0x1028"
  ATTRS{vendor}=="0x8086"

looking at parent device '/devices/pci0000:00':
  KERNELS=="pci0000:00"
  SUBSYSTEMS==""
  DRIVERS==""

In addition, I checked the output of sudo setserial -g /dev/ttyS[0123456789] too:

/dev/ttyS0, UART: 16550A, Port: 0x03f8, IRQ: 4
/dev/ttyS1, UART: unknown, Port: 0x02f8, IRQ: 3
/dev/ttyS2, UART: unknown, Port: 0x03e8, IRQ: 4
/dev/ttyS3, UART: unknown, Port: 0x02e8, IRQ: 3
/dev/ttyS4, UART: 16550A, Port: 0x4140, IRQ: 17
/dev/ttyS5, UART: 16550A, Port: 0x2100, IRQ: 18
/dev/ttyS6, UART: unknown, Port: 0x0000, IRQ: 0
/dev/ttyS7, UART: unknown, Port: 0x0000, IRQ: 0
/dev/ttyS8, UART: unknown, Port: 0x0000, IRQ: 0
/dev/ttyS9, UART: unknown, Port: 0x0000, IRQ: 0

The remaining 22 ports/devices returned a similar result /dev/ttyS31, UART: unknown, Port: 0x0000, IRQ: 0 as well.

The dmesg gives me the following prints (I have taken logs related to the PCI device only):

[    0.147241] pci 0000:03:02.0: [1fd4:1999] type 00 class 0x070200
[    0.147261] pci 0000:03:02.0: reg 0x10: [io  0x2100-0x211f]
[    0.147269] pci 0000:03:02.0: reg 0x14: [io  0x2000-0x20ff]
[    0.147285] pci 0000:03:02.0: reg 0x1c: [io  0x2120-0x212f]
[    0.147326] pci 0000:03:02.0: PME# supported from D3hot
[    0.644260] 0000:03:02.0: ttyS5 at I/O 0x2100 (irq = 18, base_baud = 921600) is a 16550A

Another clue I got (from an answer below) is that ttyS5 is the only one listed under the PCI device /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:16.3 in my PC (Please note that this particular PCI card was working fine when it was installed in a Windows 7 based PC). The following is the output of find /sys/devices/ -type d -name ttyS*:

/sys/devices/pnp0/00:04/tty/ttyS0
/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:16.3/tty/ttyS4
/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1e.0/0000:03:02.0/tty/ttyS5
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS1
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS2
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS3
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS6
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS7
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS8
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS9
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS10
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS11
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS12
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS13
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS14
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS15
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS16
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS17
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS18
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS19
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS20
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS21
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS22
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS23
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS24
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS25
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS26
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS27
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS28
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS29
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS30
/sys/devices/platform/serial8250/tty/ttyS31

I would like to understand and know why only my port labelled 1 on my Sunix is accessible and how/where can I gain access to my remaining 7 ports?

Best Answer

After some in-depth research, I got a custom driver from here:

www.sunix.com/en/download.php?pid=970&file=driver&file_link=download/driver/2016/20160706173626_snx_V2.0.4.2.tar.gz

For some reason (that I'm unaware of), the kernel doesn't seem to recognize the other serial ports. So, I got it fixed by doing the following:

Download the driver from the link above. "ncurses.h" is a dependency for the above driver. Install it using apt as:

sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev

Change to root directory (to install the driver), create a new directory temp and make temp your working directory:

cd /
sudo mkdir temp
cd /temp

Copy the tar file and extract the contents to /temp:

sudo cp ~/Downloads/20160706173626_snx_V2.0.4.2.tar.gz /temp/snx_V2.0.4.2.tar.gz
sudo tar xvf snx_V2.0.4.2.tar.gz

Install the driver using the following steps:

sudo make clean
sudo make install
sudo modprobe snx

Run lsmod | grep snx to verify. New device files should be created with a prefix as ttySNX (instead of ttyS). The same can be checked using ls /dev/ttySNX*, which should be giving the following output:

/dev/ttySNX0  /dev/ttySNX1  /dev/ttySNX2  /dev/ttySNX3  /dev/ttySNX4  /dev/ttySNX5  /dev/ttySNX6  /dev/ttySNX7

So, the bottomline is : Linux may not be able to do magic (which it does more often than not) and make every device work in a plug and play manner, it may need drivers to some specific devices.

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