modemstat and statserial show the current state of
various modem signal lines (such as DTR, CTS, etc.)irqtune will give serial port interrupts higher
priority to improve performance.hdparm for hard-disk tuning may help some more.
For the PCI bus look at /proc/pci. Otherwise see What is the current IO address and IRQ of my Serial Port ?
The "wvdialconf" program will try to find a modem on your serial ports. See What is wvdialconf ? Your problem could be due to a winmodem (or the like) which can't be used with Linux. See Avoid: winmodems. The "setserial program may be used to detect serial ports but will not detect modems on them. Thus "wvdialconf" is best to try first.
You also must type a command for each IO address you probe. Thus it's harder to use but you can try any IO address while wvdialconf likely trys only the most common IO addresses. With "setserial" you must give the "autoconfig" argument at the IO address you think the modem is at. If it shows "unknown" for UART type there may be nothing there. See What is setserial.
Here are some common mistakes people make:
This means that an operation requested by setserial, stty, etc. couldn't be done because the kernel doesn't support doing it. Formerly this was often due to the "serial" module not being loaded. But with the advent of PnP, it may likely mean that there is no modem at the address where the driver (and setserial) thinks it is. If there is no modem there, commands (for operations) sent to that address obviously don't get done. See What is set in my serial port hardware?
Another reason is that the "serial" module wasn't loaded at the time. "lsmod" will show you if it's now loaded but it sometimes is automatically loaded when needed so it may be loaded now but wasn't loaded when you got the error message. The "serial" module should be listed in the file: /etc/modules.conf. The actual module should reside in: /lib/modules/.../misc/serial.o.
This will happen from the very start of using the modem. One symptom happens when you are manually typing to your modem: You type but the screen remains blank (until after several seconds when you finally might see what you typed). Another symptom is that only a few words at a time appear on the screen (possibly with missing text).
This may be due to a mis-set IRQ. This means that the IRQ used by the device driver does not correspond to the IRQ set in hardware (IRQ mis-set). With a mis-set IRQ you may loose received data and get "input overrun" error messages (or find them in logs). See Interrupt Mis-set for more details.
It could also be an interrupt conflict. See
Interrupt Conflicts Make sure there are no IRQs being shared.
Check all your boards (serial, ethernet, SCSI, etc...). Make sure the
jumper (or PnP) settings, and the setserial parameters are
correct for all your serial devices. Also check
/proc/ioports and /proc/interrupts and
/proc/pci for conflicts.
Flow control (both at your PC and/or modem) may not be enabled. If you have set a high DTE speed (like 115.2K) then flow from your modem to your PC may work OK but a lot of flow in the other direction will not all get thru due to the telephone line bottleneck. This will result in many errors and the resending of packets. It may thus take far too long to send a file. In some cases, files don't make it thru at all. If you're downloading long uncompressed files or web pages (and your modem uses data compression) or you've set a low DTE speed, then downloading may also be broken due to no flow control.
Make sure you are using the correct syntax for your version of
init. The different init's that are out there use different
syntax in the /etc/inittab file. Make sure you are using the
correct syntax for your version of getty.
This problem can arise when DCD or DTR are not implemented correctly.
DCD should only be on (asserted) when there is an actual connection
(ie someone has dialed in), not when getty is watching the port.
Check to make sure that your modem is configured to only assert DCD
when there is a connection. DTR should be on (asserted) whenever
something is using, or watching the line, like getty,
kermit, or some other comm program.
Another common cause of ``device busy'' errors, is that you set up your serial port with an interrupt already taken by something else. As each device initializes, it asks Linux for permission to use its hardware interrupt. Linux keeps track of which interrupt is assigned to whom, and if your interrupt is already taken, your device won't be able to initialize properly. The device really doesn't have much of any way to tell you that this happened, except that when you try to use it, it will return a ``device-busy'' error. Check the interrupts on all of your boards (serial, ethernet, SCSI, etc.). Look for IRQ conflicts.
Make sure your modem is configured correctly. Look at registers
E and Q.
This can occur when your modem is chatting with getty.
Make sure you are calling getty correctly from your
/etc/inittab. Using the wrong syntax or device names will
cause serious problems.
For uugetty, verify that your /etc/gettydefs syntax is
correct by doing the following:
linux# getty -c /etc/gettydefs
This can also happen when the uugetty initialization is failing.
See section
uugetty Still Doesn't Work.
This can happen when your modem doesn't reset when DTR is dropped.
Greg Hankins saw his RD and SD LEDs go crazy when this happened.
You need to have your modem reset. Most Hayes compatible modems
do this with &D3, but on his USR Courier, he had to set
&D2 and S13=1. Check your modem manual (if you have
one).
There is a DEBUG option that comes with getty_ps. Edit your
config file
/etc/conf.{uu}getty.ttySN and
add DEBUG=NNN. Where NNN is one of the following
combination of numbers according to what you are trying to debug:
D_OPT 001 option settings
D_DEF 002 defaults file processing
D_UTMP 004 utmp/wtmp processing
D_INIT 010 line initialization (INIT)
D_GTAB 020 gettytab file processing
D_RUN 040 other runtime diagnostics
D_RB 100 ringback debugging
D_LOCK 200 uugetty lockfile processing
D_SCH 400 schedule processing
D_ALL 777 everything
DEBUG=010 is a good place to start.
If you are running syslogd, debugging info
will appear in your log files. If you aren't running syslogd
info will appear in /tmp/getty:ttySN for debugging
getty
and /tmp/uugetty:ttySN for uugetty, and in
/var/adm/getty.log. Look at the
debugging info and see what is going on. Most likely, you will need
to tune some of the parameters in your config
file, and reconfigure your modem.
You could also try mgetty. Some people have better luck with
it.