[Lancaster] USB to Serial adaptor under Ubuntu

[Martyn Welch]

On Saturday 22 December 2007 12:27, David Jenkinson wrote:
> Ken Hough wrote:
> > This adaptor is automatically recognised and configured under SuSE
> > Linux, but not under Ubuntu v7.04. Under SuSE, the relevant kernel
> > modules 'ftdi_sio' and 'usbserial' are loaded and /dev/ttyUSB0 is
> > created.
>
> I don't know much about Ubuntu, but in Slackware I'd try to manually
> load the modules, using modprobe or depmod. 

This is the approach I would take as well.

> Then if it worked I'd add 
> the relevent modules somewhere in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules I should expect,
> unless you only want them to be loaded as and when you needed them. It
> becomes a real pain if you have to make some new udev rules.
>

I'd see if this is flagged as a bug on their bug tracking system - It should 
just work...

> This is probably not much use, as Ubuntu is supposed to take care of
> everything like this for you. Maybe there is a package available which
> sets this up for you? Do some modules come as seperate packages, or are
> you left to configure the bits of the kernel that aren't in regular use
> yourself?
>

Usually just about everything that can be is available a a module in the 
kernel package, if it's a part of the kernel. I'm fairly sure that ftdi_sio 
is.

> If it was a module I was using often, I'd compile it into my kernel.
> Pretty much the only modules I use are proprietry such as Nvidias, and oss.
>

I'd flag it as a problem with the hardware recognition. It might be that Suse 
have come across this specific piece of hardware and patched their kernel/ 
userspace stuff to recognise it and use the required drivers. It might be a 
bit of a cock-up on Ubuntu's behalf - at any rate, if it works by loading the 
modules, this can be resolved for now by adding the names of the required 
modules to "/etc/modules" to get them to load at boot time as you suggest. 
Really this should just work...

> Have a look in the docs that came with the kernel source, as they can
> give you a bit more info on the options you can supply some modules when
> loading them.
>

I'd suggest sticking with the stock kernel and loading the modules - lot less 
pain when the kernel gets upgraded.

Martyn