This package was originally put together by Bruce Perens <Bruce@Pixar.com>
It is now maintained for Debian by Jonas Genannt <jonas.genannt@capi2name.de>

Note that the standard setup for this package is such that you never have
to change any of the configuration files. As standard, all configuration
changes made during the on-time of the machine are lost on a 
shutdown or halt. Only the configuration which existed when the package
was first installed is kept.

If you are upgrading from a pre 2.15 version of setserial, the old
0setserial file from rc.boot is renamed. to 0setserial.pre-2.15. This
will prevent it being run in the future, while still allowing previous
modifications to this file to be preserved. The new setserial uses
/etc/serial.conf for configuration, which has a new file format to previous
versions.

Recently there has been moves in Policy concerning /etc and its use as
a configuration directory. Basically there is a desire to make it read-only
and Policy reflects this move. The setserial system before 2.17-28 made
use of /etc for dynamic storage in breach of Policy. Now it conforms again.
/etc/serial.conf is used ONLY by the system administrator. If you put
serial configuration details in that file then those are what you get.

If you have no /etc/serial.conf file all data is held in the 
/var/lib/setserial directory. This is a private directory and changes in that
directory should only be made by experts who understand the internals of
setserial and the Debian package of setserial in particular. You have been
warned.

Without /etc/serial.conf, serial configuration is controlled via
debconf. You can review this configuration with something like
dpkg-reconfigure setserial.

Possible configurations for setserial are:
  AUTOSAVE ONCE
  AUTOSAVE ALWAYS
  KERNEL
  MANUAL (a legacy option)

If you select AUTOSAVE ALWAYS the serial configuration
is automatically rebuilt on every shutdown or halt, storing all serial
ports named which ARE NOT "unknown port". This allows you to set
serial configurations during uptime, and get them to be persistent
over reboots without user intervention.

If you select AUTOSAVE ONCE the serial configuration
the serial port data is taken from the current status at some point
in the future and stored permanently. This allows you to get your currently
working serial configuration in a way you can never lose it again in the
future. Good if you want the details saves even when the ports or modules
required are unavailable, which can happen in dynamic systems or when there
is a module configuration error.

As an additional route to fixing problems with setserial, I have added
to the configuration process an option called KERNEL, which will blank
all automatically generated information wrt serial configuration and
rely only on what the kernel reports.
This would seem a sensible option where you only have
kernel-detectable serial devices and you are happy with the kernel
default values. In reality most people can get away with this option as
standard.

Changing the /var data file by hand is DANGEROUS. You should use
depconf instead. Failure to change the conf information in debconf will result
in your changes being lost on the next package upgrade.

The idea of AUTOSAVE is to avoid having to edit any configuration files. You
configure the ports needed using "setserial" directly, and changes you
make are automatically saved on halt or shutdown for use next time. To
ensure a change is saves, all that is required is that the port has its
UART entry set to something other than "unknown". Setting it to "unknown"
will result in the entry being deleted from /etc/serial.conf when the state
is saved. However, if you have a bootup problem (like serial.o could not
load due to a kernel update), the serial configuration will be lost. Eventually
the kernel-detected ports will appear in the serial.conf file, but not other
hand-crafted entries. AUTOSAVE-ONCE is propably best, put into the first line
whenever you actually want changes to be made.

If the serial module is
unloaded from the kernel (perhaps because you have not used it for a few minutes
and then it is reloaded), all changes you have made to the serial configuration
are not reloaded by the serial module. Instead, setserial stores the
state on an unload in /var/run/setserial.conf, and reloads the state
as stored when the module reloads. If you have in serial.conf AUTOSAVE,
it will also save the current state of the ports whenever you reboot.

Aparently setserial will not save some ports properly, and under those
circumstances you must do everything by hand in /etc/serial.conf. For
details about this file see the /usr/share/doc/setserial directory for
some examples.

To delete an entry from the auto managed setserial data (say /dev/ttyS3), do
/sbin/setserial /dev/ttyS3 uart unknown
/etc/init.d/setserial stop

To restore your settings as of the last save, do
/etc/init.d/setserial start
(Note that this will not delete ports you have created which do not appear in
 the internal serial configuration file, but instead reconfigures ports
it knows about and adds in any not yet configured)

For some reason, pcmcia serial-based ports are controlled using pcmcia-cs,
not setserial. Extensive filtering is in setserial to ensure that no
status is ever saved (as of 2.15-7) which belongs to a pcmcia device.
As of 2.17-4, this was changed so that, rather than filtering such things
out, setserial now reports "pcmcia" for the device. However, you should
not be using setserial to control or even monitor pcmcia serial ports.
This reporting of pcmcia control by setserial is to allow pcmcia-cs
to work correctly.

If for some reason pcmcia-based serial configuration is appearing in
the auto part of the serial configuration (and a good indication of this
is that your pcmcia-based
port is changing device names on every reboot until its installation fails)
could you please email me the /var/lib/setserial/autoserial.conf file, the
contents of /var/run/stab, and the output of "cardctl config", as I cannot
understand why this is still a problem...

If you had a version of 2.15 less than -7 in your system, and you have
pcmcia problems, read the "pcmcia.repair" file.


----------------------------------

When the serial.o module is loaded (or is hard-coded) the options under
which is was compiled should be visible. Often on a standard kernel
you get something like:

Serial driver version 4.27 with no serial options enabled

With no serial options enabled, you only get 4 serial ports in the kernel,
no matter how many you try to use in setserial. These are numbered 0 to
3. You cannot use numbers larger than 3 without recompiling the kernel.
The number of the port is in itself irrelevant, so do not feel that a
particular number is essential to get things to work. Users converting from
other distributions may be confused, as port 13 or 14 seem to have been
chosen automatically for them by their old distribution, but in reality
this could have easily have been port 2. In standard systems, port 0 and 1
are the two motherboard serial devices, and 3 and 4 are unused.

----------------------------------

Gordon.
