Subject: Naming Serial Devices
From: [email-masked] (Rick Miller - Linux Device Registrar)
Date: 3 May 1993 13:02:25 +0300
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux,comp.os.linux.announce

Okay folks...

Since this affects almost *all* of us, I've posted it to both newsgroups.

The naming of serial devices has been hairy from the beginning.  First, it
was simply "tty64", "tty65", "tty66", and so on.  Then it got changed to
"ttys1" through "ttys4" but some blessed UNIX geek started spreading the
gospel according to "ttys0".

That's where things *really* got confused.  For a long time, both the SLS
and H.J.Lu's distribution both had *MIXED* numberings for their serial tty's.
...and this is where I came in, and found the anomaly when composing the
first release of the Linux Device List.  So, I made the 0-3 numbering into
the "official" (according to me) naming.

As with my recent release, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
"What about my pty's?!?" they said, and a general consensus was reached that
the serial devices would be named "ttyS?" with a CAPITAL "S" to make room
for lots and lots of pty-slave pairs   ...which it did.

Within the last few months though, there have been rumblings from the multi-
port camp about the "ttyS?" scheme, since names like "ttyS10" show up wrong
through "ps" and the like as "ttyS1", being truncated.  Now, finally, I think
that such a brilliant idea has come up that I'm calling for willing consensus.

Rather than throw ourselves into a hyperbolic trajectory like "tty00" or even
"con??" or "ttyC??"... why not duplicate the PTY naming method, but with the
first letter starting at CAPITAL "S" and going on down the line?

So, here's the idea:

Your standard first four:  ttyS0, ttyS1, ttyS2, ttyS3,
...and then from there:
	ttyS4, ttyS5, ttyS6, ... , ttyS9, ttySa, ttySb, ttySc, ... , ttySf,
	ttyT0, ttyT1, ttyT2, ... , ttyT9, ttyTa, ttyTb, ttyTc, ... , ttyTf,

	So we're using  tty[S-V][0-f]

		First letter is CAPITALIZED, second place is in hex.

			Well, waddaya think???

Rick Miller  <[email-masked]> | <[email-masked]>   Ricxjo Muelisto
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