"Gerhard Fürnkranz" wrote:
Agreed. While UUCP-locking is likely the most usual way to reserve a serial port for exclusive access, one can still not be sure, that _every_ application honors it. But IMO still better than accessing the ports w/o any locking. The only alternative is not to scan/touch the ports at all and let the user specify the port (a device auto-detection can still be done on the user-specified port then).
That's basically what I was trying to do, but the problem is that typically Unix systems list dozens of non-existent ttyS's, thereby confusing the user. Listing real ones makes the process of figuring out where your instrument is somewhat easier. Graeme.