CODEWITHSUNDEEP
macosserial-port
gr3g
gr3g

Reputation: 2914

serial port names not the same in terminal and in preferences system

I'm able to see serial ports in Terminal:

ls /dev/tty.*

also in OSX: preferences system -> network.

But the names are different, Ex: /dev/tty.usbserial-26223B and Quad RS232-HS 24

I have 64 ports, so I don't know which one is the good one...

Upvotes: 2

Views: 615

Answers (2)

Foad S. Farimani
Foad S. Farimani

Reputation: 14056

I'm actually not sure how did you manage to get the serial device in the preferences system > network section. Maybe it was a feature in the older version of macOS which I'm not aware of?

In macOS Mojave 10.14.6 one can see the serial devices in the system reports section:

enter image description here

but as you truly mentioned it does not report the actual serial port which can be listed through the ls /dev/{tty,cu}.* command. Apart from the system_profiler command, there is also the ioreg which can be used in the below format to list many information about the serial port device:

ioreg -r -c IOUSBHostDevice -l  | grep -E "@|IOTTYDevice|idProduct|idVendor|USB Vendor Name|USB Product Name"

Now one could try to use awk/sed/grep to further clean up the "hierarchical registry structure as an inverted tree" information. this is as far as I could get with the cripled version of sed on macOS terminal/bash:

sed -E -n -e 's/^(\+-o .*)  <.*$/\1/p' -e 's/^(  \|   "idProduct" = [0-9]+)$/\1/p' -e 's/^(  \|   "USB Product Name" = .+)$/\1/p' -e 's/^(  \|   "USB Vendor Name" = .+)$/\1/p' -e 's/^(  \|   "idVendor" = [0-9]+)$/\1/p' -e 's/^(            "IOTTYDevice" = .+)$/\1/p'

Upvotes: 1

Jake Cobb
Jake Cobb

Reputation: 1861

The serial ports should all have a corresponding /dev/cu.* device (Call-Up). If you're looking for a particular device connected by USB, maybe your easiest route is check the /dev devices with it disconnected, then connect it and check again.

You can also use system_profiler to look for info on what is using a /dev/tty.* device, e.g. running system_profiler 2>&1 | tee system.profiler.log and searching for /dev/tty I see:

|   +-o IOSerialBSDClient  <class IOSerialBSDClient, id 0x100000471, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (0 ms), retain 5>
|       {
|         "IOClass" = "IOSerialBSDClient"
|         "CFBundleIdentifier" = "com.apple.iokit.IOSerialFamily"
|         "IOProviderClass" = "IOSerialStreamSync"
|         "IOTTYBaseName" = "Bluetooth-Modem"
|         "IOSerialBSDClientType" = "IOModemSerialStream"
|         "IOProbeScore" = 0x3e8
|         "IOCalloutDevice" = "/dev/cu.Bluetooth-Modem"
|         "IODialinDevice" = "/dev/tty.Bluetooth-Modem"
|         "IOMatchCategory" = "IODefaultMatchCategory"
|         "IOTTYDevice" = "Bluetooth-Modem"
|         "IOResourceMatch" = "IOBSD"
|         "IOGeneralInterest" = "IOCommand is not serializable"
|         "IOTTYSuffix" = ""
|       }

However, the network information is separate, this corresponds to what you see in the preferences GUI:

Bluetooth PAN:

  Type: Ethernet
  Hardware: Ethernet
  BSD Device Name: en3
  IPv4:
      Configuration Method: DHCP
  IPv6:
      Configuration Method: Automatic
  Proxies:
      Exceptions List: *.local, 169.254/16
      FTP Passive Mode: Yes
  Service Order: 3

Upvotes: 1

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