Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Mark and Andrew,

Guy is correct. Yet Mark’s case is slight different from Andrew’s.

As Guy mentioned, ftdi_sio has the capability of adding ONE extra unlisted vendor device (the developer was farsighted but not generous enough). That's why you can still load the driver and use it for one of the Newport devices although it is not listed before version 3.8. But you can only load one type at a time as you experienced unless you rebuild the module by adding the vendor:product pairs in. Alternatively you need to use 3.8 which already has the 104d:3000 built in and then add the other one (104d:3006) by using modprobe.

In Andrew’s case, it could be much easier since you have the same type of devices. Each device should have a unique serial number (can be found out by command below) especially for massive production although this is not mandatory by the spec. The installation guide for your reference is illustrated below.

The kernel you are using I think you meant 3.6.32. That’s fine.

1. use modprobe to register the Newport device as Mark did after Linux boot. You can literally put this in the startup script (.bash_profile for Redhat for e.g) so that it loads it during the boot time.

sudo modprobe ftdi_sio vendor=0x104d product=0x3006

Once the driver is loaded, any device plugged in will be identified and added a node as /dev/ttyUSB*. Yet this ttyUSB* is not you are going to use. Use the symbolic link defined in the rules’ file later.

2. now plug in one of those devices (one at a time) and issue command

                […]# lsusb -v -d104d: 3006

This will list all the descriptors of that device. Looking for iSerial or iSerialNumber. Its value has two parts. The first number is the index of the string descriptors for the serial number. The second part is the serial number itself, say XXXXX01

3. build a rules’ file similar to what Mark did, 81-Agilis.rules for e.g. in folder /etc/udev/rules.d and add one entry something like:

SUBSYSTEM=="tty", ATTRS{idVendor}=="104d", ATTRS{idProduct}=="3006", ATTRS{serial}==" XXXXX01", SYMLINK+="myusb01"

The last SYMLINK ‘myusb01’ is the one you are going to use by drvAsynSerialPortConfigure or minicom. This symbolic link will persist whatever you unplug/plugin or in different slot.

4. unplug the first device and plug in the second one and repeat 2,3,4 until all 18 devices have been added to the rules.

Next time when boot or any time when you plug in, it should populate all devices as you defined.  

If the manufacturer DIDN’T put a serial number for each device, that could be awkward. The only way is as Guy suggested: plugin all of them and don’t change. This will certainly have lots of maintenance issues.

HTH.

Jim