On-board serial port compatibility?

[olivierlambert]

Hi,

Can you tell more precisely what do you want to achieve functionally speaking?

[Andrew]

@LuisRiveraSig What chipset is used for the serial ports? My guess is that it's a special MOXA serial chipset (non-16550) and requires a special driver that XCP/Xen does not natively support.

[LuisRiveraSig]

@olivierlambert We are trying to migrate from VMWare to XCP so we want to enable those two on-board serial ports, the goal here is to be
able to communicate with them.

[LuisRiveraSig]

@Andrew It uses ITE8786E. Where could we find drivers for this?

[Andrew]

@LuisRiveraSig What are you trying to use the serial ports for?

• XCP console?
• Dom0 Serial port (ie. UPS monitor)?
• DomU/VM?

[LuisRiveraSig]

@Andrew Its going to be used for digital I/O

[Andrew]

@LuisRiveraSig Since the device is not need for Xen Console or Dom0 then you can try a PCI pass-thru to the VM or use a USB device and pass it to the VM and just use the needed driver in the VM directly.

[Double-e]

@Andrew
I too would like to pass thru a serial port on Dell R460 server host to a vm running linux. I would like to use this to talk to a lighting system with this VM rather than using a stand alone desktop.

[Andrew]

@Double-e If you serial ports show up as a PCI or USB device then you can pass it to a VM. Most normal on-board serial ports can not be directly used in a VM.

Use lspci and lsusb to check your devices.

[Double-e]

@Andrew I did not see a serial port listed. I'll just get a USB version and plug in to server and see if I can pass thru it. If it works, I can get rid of another Destop server and be fully virtual.
Thanks for your hellp.