Linux IR HOWTO Werner Heuser, < wehe@snafu.de > v2.4, 9 February 1999 An introduction to Linux and infrared devices and how to use the soft­ ware provided by the Linux/IrDA project. This package uses IrDA(TM) compliant standards. IrDA(TM) is an industrial standard for infrared wireless communication, and most laptops made after January 1996 are equipped with an IrDA(TM) compliant infrared transceiver. Infrared ports let you communicate with printers, modems, fax machines, LANs, and other laptops. Speed ranges from 2400bps to 4Mbps. The Linux/IrDA stack supports IrLAP, IrLMP, IrIAS, IrIAP, IrLPT, IrCOMM, IrOBEX, and IrLAN. Several of the protocols are implemented as both clients and servers. There is also support for multiple IrLAP connections, via several IrDA(TM) devices at once. The Linux/IrDA project started at the end of 1997 and its status is still experimental, so please don't expect every feature working straight. AFAIK Linux/IrDA is the _only_ open source IrDA implementation currently available. Remote Control (RC) via infrared is not the aim of the project, though partly treated in this HOWTO. ______________________________________________________________________ Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2. Prerequisites 3. Kernel 3.1 General Parameters 3.2 IrDA Specific Parameters 3.2.1 IrDA subsystem support 3.2.1.1 IrDA protocols 3.2.1.2 IrDA protocol options 3.2.1.3 IrDA compressors 3.2.2 Infrared-port device drivers 3.2.2.1 IrTTY (uses serial driver) 3.2.2.2 Dongle support 3.2.2.3 FIR support 4. Linux/IrDA-Utils 5. Configuration 5.1 General Configuration 5.2 IrManager 5.3 Low Level Drivers 5.3.1 SIR 5.3.2 Dongle Connection - Infrared Adapters for the Serial Port 5.3.3 Dongle Connection - Infrared Motherboard Adapter 5.3.4 Fast InfraRed (FIR) 6. Specific Connections and Protocols 6.1 Printer Connection - IrLPT 6.2 LAN Connection - IrLAN 6.3 Palm III Connection - IrOBEX 6.4 Cellular Phone Connection 6.5 Digital Camera Connection 6.6 Window$95 and Linux/IrDA 6.7 Linux to Linux Connection 6.7.1 Connection Methods 6.7.2 Compression 6.8 Multiple Instances 7. Hardware Supported by Linux/IrDA 7.1 Obtaining Information about the Infrared Port in Laptops 7.1.1 SIR 7.1.2 FIR 7.2 Hardware Overviews 8. GUI 9. Power Saving 10. Troubleshooting, Mailing List 10.1 General Information 10.2 Troubleshooting Techniques 11. Known Bugs 12. FAQ 13. Infrared Remote Control 13.1 Resources 13.2 Infrared Remote Control - IrDA 14. Infrared and Eye Safety 15. Credits 16. Revision History 17. Copyright and Disclaimer ______________________________________________________________________ 1. Introduction Better red, than dead. - Unknown AuthorEss Since 2.1.131 and 2.2.0 Linux/IrDA is part of the kernel. Please note that the status of the project is still experimental. If you need information about Linux/IrDA support for 2.0.x kernels please look into the former version of this HOWTO at http://www.snafu.de/~wehe/index_li.html. But AFAIK this package is no longer maintained. Companies and developers which are interested in joining these efforts should contact the Linux/IrDA project at http://www.cs.uit.no/~dagb/irda or me at < wehe@snafu.de >. Some history about Linux/IrDA. The project started at the end of 1997 with the name Linux/IrDA. Due to some troubles with the name IrDA, which is trademarked by the Infrared Data Association IrDA http://www.irda.org/, the name was changed to Linux/IR. At the end of 1998 the the relationship between both became better and the name was changed to Linux/IrDA again. This document is based on the "How to use" part of the Linux/IrDA project homepage http://www.cs.uit.no/~dagb/irda/howto.html. I also included material provided by the Linux/IrDA core team, the Linux/IrDA mailing list and other sources. The document is included in the LINUX DOCUMENTATION PROJECT http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP. The latest version of this document is available at http://www.snafu.de/~wehe/index_li.html I tried to check all information but I don't have all the necessary infrared hardware yet, so if something doesn't work for you, please don't blame me. Please feel free to contact me for comments or questions. I know this material is not finished or perfect, but I hope you find it useful anyway. 2. Prerequisites · BIOS - Make sure your infrared port is enabled in the BIOS and check what interrupt and port address it uses. · Infrared Controller Chip - Make sure your infrared port is detected by the Linux kernel. For detailed information see the "Hardware Overview" section below. · modutils - Make sure you use modutils 2.1.x by insmod --version. I use version 2.1.121. · Shared Library - The shared library libc.so.5 and the loader ld-linux.so.1 has to be available. - But glibc2 aka libc6 should work also. - I am not sure wether you need the zlib library if you use the data compression features. · GUI Currently there are two GraphicalUserInterface's for Linux/IrDA under development: · GNOBEX A GNOME application developed by Dag Brattli http://www.cs.uit.no/~dagb/irda/irda.html with support for drag'n drop from the GNOME file manager (gmc). It will also show the progress of the file transfer and give some better error messages when something goes wrong. The GUI isn't finished yet, but if you want to try the GUI you will need the Perl-GTK+ module. · KDE A KDE application developed by Thomas Davis. Look at his page http://www.jps.net/tadavis/irda. For all you lurkers out - here's your chance to contribute! Both GUI's need some icons. Any icons need to be: a) set size (48x48 pixels seems to be a common size, I think) b) large & mini (ask about size for that; mini's are for docking and such) c) 16 colors d) free for use. e) please, don't blatently copy MS icons! Please contact the developers. · Security - Most important, you must sync your disks!!! Maybe you have to reboot your machine. Have you read the disclaimer? · Miscellaneous - Other useful progs: APSFILTER, EZ-Magic, MagicFilter or something similar for the printer configuration. 3. Kernel Please read the Kernel-HOWTO to get more information about the compilation process. You'll find the Linux/IrDA code in: /usr/src/linux/net/irda (protocol stuff) /usr/src/linux/drivers/net/irda (device drivers) /usr/src/linux/include/net/irda (header files) 3.1. General Parameters - Make sure you use kernel 2.2.x sources. If unsure about your kernel version try uname -r. - Get the latest kernel patch from the Linux/IrDA project http://www.cs.uit.no/~dagb/irda/snapshots/. Put it into /usr/src or where else your kernel sources live and apply something like (replace patch-2_2.0-irdaXXX with the actual file name): ______________________________________________________________________ cd /usr/src tar xvzf patch-2_2.0-irdaXXX.tar.gz cd linux patch -p1 -l < ./patch-2_2.0-irdaXXX ______________________________________________________________________ - Experimental support has to be enabled (CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL). - Enable sysctl in "General Setup" (CONFIG_SYSCTL). - You should have proc file system support (CONFIG_PROC_FS). - Also serial support for the SIR features (CONFIG_SERIAL). - I am not sure wether there has to be printer support for using a printer with Linux/IrDA (CONFIG_PRINTER). But I assume this feature is not necessary. - Networking support must be enabled (CONFIG_NET). - Make sure you have module support (CONFIG_MODULES) in your kernel! Test it e.g. with lsmod. - Also kerneld support is recommended (CONFIG_KERNELD). But kmod (CONFIG_KMOD) also works. A monolithic kernel seems to work, too. - Matt Francis wrote: "I notice that some of the modules appear to want not only module support (as noted on the webpage), but also misc user device support." (CONFIG_UMISC). If you only apply the Linux/IrDA patch, you should not have to do a make clean, so that should save you some time. I suggest you do something like this: ______________________________________________________________________ make dep && make all && make modules && make install && make modules_install ______________________________________________________________________ If you get really strange errors, then try to rebuild from scratch after a make clean. 3.2. IrDA Specific Parameters The following is my suggestion for ../linux-2.2.x/Documentation/Configure.help, parts are from Dag Brattli and Andreas Butz: 3.2.1. IrDA subsystem support CONFIG_IRDA IrDA(TM) is an industrial standard for infrared wireless communication. Infrared ports let you communicate with printers, modems, fax machines, LANs, and laptops. Speed ranges from 2400bps to 4Mbps. To use this features you need the irda_utils provided by the Linux/IrDA project http://www.cs.uit.no/ dagb/irda/ Further information you may find there and in the Linux/IR-HOWTO at http://www.snafu.de/ wehe/index_li.html Currently it is recommended to build IrDA support as modules only. Please see Documentation/modules.txt. Please note the status of Linux/IrDA is still experimental. 3.2.1.1. IrDA protocols · IrLAN protocol CONFIG_IRLAN Builds the IrDA network device. Use ``ifconfig eth0 '' to configure it. - Just say Y · IrLAN client support CONFIG_IRLAN_CLIENT If you connect to infrared devices via IrLAN one has to be the server and the other the client. You can use both the client and the server at the same time. The first one to connect becomes the client. - Just say Y Note: The latest patch includes peer-to-peer support instead. · IrLAN server support CONFIG_IRLAN_SERVER If you connect to infrared devices via IrLAN one has to be the server and the other the client. You can use both the client and the server at the same time. The first one to connect becomes the client. - Just say Y Note: The latest patch includes peer-to-peer support instead. · IrOBEX protocol CONFIG_IROBEX IrOBEX is a protocol for exchanging objects (files, vcards, etc.) over an infrared connection. You can use it to exchange files between linux and a PALM III. IrOBEX can also be used between two Linux boxes, Linux and Windows95, etc. - Just say Y · IrCOMM protocol CONFIG_IRCOMM Over IrCOMM you may communicate with cellular phones, etc. To use this service you have to build a new device with ``mknod /dev/irnine c 60 64'', which works like /dev/ttySx. - Just say Y ..Note: major and minor number are still not the official ones yet. For latest improvements (IrSocket is on the way!), please look at the page of Takahide Higuchi http://www.pluto.dti.ne.jp/ thiguchi/irda/ ..Note: At the moment IrCOMM seems to crash your kernel easily, you should probably wait for the next patch. · IrLPT client support CONFIG_IRLPT_CLIENT Say Y here if you want to build support for the IrLPT client protocol. If you want to compile it as a module, say M here and read Documentation/modules.txt. The IrLPT client protocol can be used to print documents to IrDA compatible printers like the HP-5MP, or IrLPT printer adapters like the ACTiSYS IR-100M. - Just say Y · IrLPT server support CONFIG_IRLPT_SERVER Say Y here if you want to build support for the IrLPT server protocol. If you want to compile it as a module, say M here and read Documentation/modules.txt. The IrLPT server protocol makes it possible to use a Linux machine as an infrared printer server for other laptops. So if your Linux machine has a cable connection to a printer, then other laptops can use the Linux machine to print out documents using infrared communication. - Just say Y 3.2.1.2. IrDA protocol options CONFIG_IRDA_OPTIONS You may define some IrDA protocol options. · Cache last LSAP CONFIG_IRDA_CACHE_LAST_LSAP Say Y here if you want IrLMP to cache the last LSAP used. This makes sense since most frames will be sent/received on the same connection. Enabling this option will save a hash-lookup per frame. If unsure, say Y. · FAST RRs CONFIG_IRDA_FAST_RR Use this option if you want to send faster RR (Receive Ready) frames if the transmit queue is empty. This will give you much better latencies but will consume more power, because of the bouncing RR frame. · Recycle RRs CONFIG_IRDA_RECYCLE_RR In the normal life of the IrLAP protocol, it sends a lot of small RR (Receive Ready) frames over the link (at least when it has nothing else to do). Saying Y to this option will make IrLAP recycle these frames thus avoiding many alloc_skb's and kfree_skb's. To do this it will only buffer one of these frame which is enough for the usual case. · Debug information CONFIG_IRDA_DEBUG Say Y here if you want the IrDA subsystem to write debug information to your syslog. You can change the debug level in /proc/sys/net/irda/debug. If unsure, say Y (since it makes it easier to find the bugs). 3.2.1.3. IrDA compressors CONFIG_IRDA_COMPRESSION You may use the compression methods BZIP2 and BSD. These are not IrDA standard. This will allow two linux boxes to handshake compression. It should be compatible with other IrDA devices, although communication will not be compressed then. · Deflate compression (experimental) CONFIG_IRDA_DEFLATE Say Y here if you want to build support for the Deflate compression protocol. If you want to compile it as a module, say M here and read Documentation/modules.txt. The deflate compression (GZIP) is exactly the same as used by the PPP protocol. Enabling this option will build a module called irda_deflate.o. · BZIP2 compression CONFIG_IRDA_BZIP2 Help not available yet. · BSD compression CONFIG_IRDA_BSD Help not available yet. 3.2.2. Infrared-port device drivers Three sorts of low level infrared drivers are available: serial, dongle and FIR. They will show up in /proc/net/dev (irda0) after initialisation. 3.2.2.1. IrTTY (uses serial driver) Most IrDA chips support StandardInfraRed (SIR), which works up to 115200bps and emulates a serial port (16550A UART). On many laptops this port is detected by the serial support of the kernel, see ``dmesg''. IrTTY connects the Linux/IrDA services to this port. - You should say Y here. · Serial dongle support CONFIG_IRTTY_SIR Say Y here if you want to build support for the IrTTY line discipline. If you want to compile it as a module, say M here and read Documentation/modules.txt. IrTTY makes it possible to use Linux's own serial driver for all IrDA ports that are 16550 compatible. Most IrDA chips are 16550 compatible so you should probably say Y to this option. Using IrTTY will however limit the speed of the connection to 115200 bps (IrDA SIR mode). If unsure, say Y. 3.2.2.2. Dongle support CONFIG_DONGLE Currently four dongles (infrared adapters for the serial port) are supported. The dongle is an infrared device which may be connected to serial port, if you don't have built-in infrared support for your machine. If you use a dongle together with a laptop you maybe have to disable the IrDA support in the BIOS. · ESI JetEye PC dongle CONFIG_ESI_DONGLE Say Y here if you want to build support for the Extended Systems JetEye PC dongle. If you want to compile it as a module, say M here and read Documentation/modules.txt. The ESI dongle attaches to the normal 9-pin serial port connector, and can currently only be used by IrTTY. To activate support for ESI dongles you will have to insert ``irattach -d esi'' in the /etc/irda/drivers script. http://www.extendsys.com/support/ftp/infrared.html · ACTiSYS IR-220L and IR220L+ dongle CONFIG_ACTISYS_DONGLE Say Y here if you want to build support for the ACTiSYS IR-220L and IR220L+ dongles. If you want to compile it as a module, say M here and read Documentation/modules.txt. The ACTiSYS dongles attaches to the normal 9-pin serial port connector, and can currently only be used by IrTTY. To activate support for ACTiSYS dongles you will have to insert ``irattach -d actisys'' or ``irattach -d actisys_plus'' in the/etc/irda/drivers script. http://www.actisys.com · Tekram IrMate 210B dongle CONFIG_TEKRAM_DONGLE Say Y here if you want to build support for the Tekram IrMate 210B dongle. If you want to compile it as a module, say M here and read Documentation/modules.txt. The Tekram dongle attaches to the normal 9-pin serial port connector, and can currently only be used by IrTTY. To activate support for Tekram dongles you will have to insert ``irattach -d tekram'' in the /etc/irda/drivers script. http://www.tekram.de/ · CONFIG_GIRBIL_DONGLE Say Y here if you want to build support for the Greenwich Instruments GirBIL dongle. If you want to compile it as a module, say M here and read Documentation/modules.txt. The Greenwich dongle attaches to the normal 9-pin serial port connector, and can currently only be used by IrTTY. To activate support for Greenwich dongles you will have to insert ``irattach -d girbil'' in the /etc/irda/drivers script. http://www.greenwichinst.com/ 3.2.2.3. FIR support FastInfraredSupport (FIR) needs a specific controller chip, which supports up to 4Mps. - Just say Y · NSC PC87108 CONFIG_NSC_FIR NationalSemiConductor NSC PC87108 FIR chip e.g. used in the IBM Thinkpad 560X and ACTiSYS IR2000 dongle. Probably the NSC PC87338 FIR chip is also supported. The driver supports SIR, MIR and FIR (4Mbps) speeds. - Just say Y · Winbond W83977AF (IR) CONFIG_WINBOND_FIR Winbond W83977AF (IR) FIR chip e.g. used in the Corel Netwinder PC. The driver supports SIR, MIR and FIR (4Mbps) speeds. - Just say Y · Sharp UIRCC CONFIG_SHARP_FIR Say Y here if you want to build support for the Sharp UIRCC IrDA chipset. If you want to compile it as a module, say M here and read Documentation/modules.txt. This chipset is used by the Toshiba Tecra laptops. 4. Linux/IrDA-Utils · Use the latest source snapshot of irda-utils available at http://www.cs.uit.no/~dagb/irda/irda-utils/ · Untar the package with tar xvzf irda-utils. I recommend to do this in /usr/src. · Do a make depend. · Do a make clean (not necessary if you compile the package for the first time). · Do a make all to build the binaries. · Do a make install, this brings irattach and irmanager into the right place and installs some config files in /etc/irda. A recommendation from Bjoern Hansson : If make depend fails on stdef.h and stdarg.h just add -I/usr/lib/gcc- lib/i586-linux/egcs-2.90.29/include/ or the according path for your system to the SYS_INCLUDES line in Makefile. 5. Configuration 5.1. General Configuration · First you should put your IR devices in range. Though it might be possible that the Linux/IrDA service detects every new device automagically I only have good experience with the devices in range during the configuration process. · Keep your infrared devices together in a range below one meter and an angle of 30 degree. There has to be a direct line of sight between them. If this is not possible, you may use a mirror (an unused M$ CD should work quite good). · Add the following lines to your /etc/conf.modules file: ___________________________________________________________________ alias tty-ldisc-11 irtty # alias char-major-60 ircomm_tty # if you want IrCOMM support ___________________________________________________________________ I'm really not sure about those parameters anymore. There is conflict­ ing information on Dag Brattli's pages and on the list. Though they had to be used with former versions of the Linux/IrDA package, this behaviour probably changed with the version for 2.2.x kernels. · Have a look into the files in /etc/irda. They are similar to the files in /etc/pcmcia. Edit /etc/irda/drivers to reflect your setup. Most people will use irattach from that file. The files are: ___________________________________________________________________ Makefile network* network.redhat* serial drivers network.opts obex printer ___________________________________________________________________ · Run depmod -a. 5.2. IrManager Dag Brattli wrote: " IrManager [...].is a user-space daemon that is inspired and quite similar to the cardmgr used in the PCMCIA distribution. The IrManager will receive events from the kernel level side of the protocol stack. When the IrManager receives an event it can execute shell commands and scripts, so I have added the /etc/irda directory which will contain such scripts. [...] For example, if IrLMP discovers a remote device with IrLAN provider capabilities and no local IrLAN client has registered, then IrLMP will send an event to the IrManager and make it "modprobe" the module required. [...] When application level clients are ready for communication and user- space configuration, they can also notify IrManager about this, so that it can execute the right script. For example IrLAN will send the event EVENT_IRLAN_START when the data channel is ready for exchanging Ethernet frames. When IrManager receives this event, it will execute /etc/irda/network start to configure the network interface. This network script is actually the same as used by the PCMCIA code and since I'm using the Redhat variant of it, it will in turn execute /sbin/ifup . So by using the IrManager, I "only" have to do this when I start the stack: ______________________________________________________________________ irattach /dev/ttyS2 & irmanager -d 1 # -d 1 means: start discovery process ______________________________________________________________________ and then when my laptop discovers the IrLAN provider (HP Netbeamer in my case) it will ask IrManager to load the module irlan_client. When the connection is up and ready, it will ask it to execute /etc/irda/network start eth0. When the connection is broken, it will again ask it to take down the interface using /etc/irda/network stop eth0.[...] That's all to get it working if you are using Redhat. If you are using some other distribution which doesn't have /sbin/ifup, then you better copy /etc/pcmcia/network.opts to /etc/irda/network.opts or configure the file yourself. If you want to use the IrLAN server, you will still have to modprobe irlan_server before you start the irmanager _without_ -d 1. And just like the cardmgr, you will (if you want to) get the beeps when the connection is up and running and when it is disconnected!!! I hope that we can add such scripts for all the other clients/services that need user level configuration. It would be really cool to have a /etc/irda/printer script for configuring IrDA(TM) capable printers. So if you get in range of an IrDA(TM) capable printer, then IrManager should load the irlpt_client module, and also configure the other stuff that needs to be done for using this printer. I also hope that we can use the config file for configuring IrDA(TM) ports and device drivers. Something like: ______________________________________________________________________ Device Drivers module "irtty" script="irattach /dev/ttyS2" module "smc_ircc" irq=11 port=0x34f ______________________________________________________________________ So that IrManager can load and start all these when it is executed. In this way we would only have to start IrManager in /etc/rc.d/init.d/irda and the rest would be plug and play. There would be no need for manually starting programs and configuring devices. When irmanager receives the following events for a device it will currently do: EVENT_IRLAN_START, start and configure the device using /sbin/ifup EVENT_IRLAN_STOP, close the device using /sbin/ifdown This can however be easily changed by the user, if this is not what is the prefered behaviour. 5.3. Low Level Drivers There are three sorts of low level drivers: SIR, dongle and FIR. If the right driver is detected by the kernel you get a message like: ______________________________________________________________________ IrDA irda_device irda0 registered. ______________________________________________________________________ 5.3.1. SIR · Try to find out which serial port is used by the IR device. You may do so by watching the output of dmesg. If serial support is modularized do an insmod serial first. Look for an entry like: ___________________________________________________________________ Serial driver version 4.25 with no serial options enabled ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A #first serial port /dev/ttyS0 ttyS01 at 0x3000 (irq = 10) is a 16550A #e.g. infrared port ttyS02 at 0x0300 (irq = 3) is a 16550A #e.g. PCMCIA modem port ___________________________________________________________________ If this is not the case, you either don't have infrared support enabled in the BIOS or your infrared device is not detected by the kernel. Currently I know only two laptop models with this effect, the HP OmniBook 800 and the Toshiba Libretto models. I am not sure whether PnP support effects the detection of the IR port. If you are unsure try it out and let me know the results. · In some situations you may have to use setserial /dev/ttyS<0-2> port 0xNNNN irq M to set the values for your infrared serial port, especially if the infrared port is a separate serial line. You usually don't need to change the values! For further information look into the FAQ section below. · If you don't use kerneld or kmod insert the irda module with modprobe irda. · Do lsmod. It should show the modules irda and irtty now. · A look into /var/log/messages should show the entry "Serial connection established" now. · Say irmanager -d1, which will start the necessary programs, such as irattach. · Give irattach some time, e.g. seven seconds, to detect other IR devices. Then watch the output from the kernel that you will hopefully get in /var/log/messages. It should look like the following (I removed some lines, which were not related to Linux/IrDA): Jan 2 12:57:26 japh kernel: ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A Jan 2 12:57:26 japh kernel: ttyS02 at 0x03e8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A Jan 2 12:57:26 japh kernel: Linux Support for the IrDA (tm) protocols (Dag Brattli) Jan 2 12:59:09 japh syslog: executing: 'echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/irda/discovery' Jan 2 12:59:09 japh syslog: Setting discovery to 1 exited with status 1 Jan 2 12:59:09 japh syslog: + 0.1 Fri Jul 25 11:45:26 1997 Dag Brattli Jan 2 12:59:09 japh syslog: + 0.1 Fri Jul 25 11:45:26 1997 Dag Brattli Jan 2 12:59:09 japh syslog: Serial connection established. Jan 2 12:59:09 japh kernel: IrDA irda_device irda0 registered. Jan 2 13:01:22 japh syslog: executing: './drivers start ' Jan 2 13:01:22 japh syslog: Serial connection established. Jan 2 13:01:42 japh syslogd: Printing partial message Jan 2 13:01:42 japh 0.1 Fri Jul 25 11:45:26 1997 Dag Brattli Jan 2 13:02:49 japh kernel: IrDA Discovered: japh Jan 2 13:02:49 japh kernel: Services: Computer 5.3.2. Dongle Connection - Infrared Adapters for the Serial Port The currently supported dongles are the Extended Systems Inc. ESI-9680 JetEye, the Tekram IRmate 210B, the ACTiSYS IR220L and 220L+, the Greenwich GIrBIL. dongle. Dag Brattli wrote (modified by wh): "To use dongles you have to do something like this: ______________________________________________________________________ modprobe tekram # or esi or actisys irmanager -d 1 # irattach -d tekram # or -d esi or -d actisys ______________________________________________________________________ As you can see, you must still use the -d option with irattach since it is possible to have two serial ports using different dongles at the same time (so the tty you are binding must know which dongle it is supposed to use). So if you have two dongles and two serial ports, you could do something like this: ______________________________________________________________________ modprobe tekram modprobe esi irattach /dev/ttyS0 -d esi & irattach /dev/ttyS1 -d tekram & ______________________________________________________________________ PS: I would not try to turn the two dongles against each other, since I really don't know how the stack would react :-) ... Since I don't have any of these new ACTiSYS 220L+ dongles, I'm not able to test it. Since the new dongle has support for one extra speed (38400bps), you must specify the dongles differently with irattach so that the kernel knows which dongle you are using (and what QoS can be used): ______________________________________________________________________ irattach /dev/ttyS0 -d actisys # for the 220L dongle irattach /dev/ttyS0 -d actisys+ # for the 220L+ dongle ______________________________________________________________________ The current implementation of dongle support does not have any state associated with it, so its not possible to use both ACTiSYS dongles (220L and 220L+) at the same time (connected to two serial ports) for now. If someone needs to be able to do so, please mail me (Dag Brattli) and I will think about it!" Note: When I tried to use an infrared modem (Swissmod 56Ki, manufactured by Telelink AG) connected to my laptop (IrDA works with Window$95 only, due to non standard hardware) I had to remove the infrared support in the BIOS to get it working! 5.3.3. Dongle Connection - Infrared Motherboard Adapter Support for the ACTiSYS IR2000 dongle has been implemented in a file called pc87108 which you can either compile into the kernel or insmod/modprobe to insert the module: ______________________________________________________________________ irmanager -d 1 modprobe pc87108 ______________________________________________________________________ or insert modprobe pc87108 into the /etc/irda/drivers file (I think). 5.3.4. Fast InfraRed (FIR) The IrDA(TM) standard knows three kinds of speeds: 1. SIR = Standard IrDA, up to 115kbps IrDA, 2. MIR = Medium Speed IrDA, 3. FIR = Fast IrDA (4Mbps), 4. VFIR = Very Fast IrDA(16Mbps), seems to become a future standard Up to 115.200bps many infrared controllers work like a serial port. Up to 4Mbps they work in "FIR mode". Currently there are two chips supported: NationalSemiConductor NSC PC87108 e.g. used in IBM Thinkpad 560X and Winbond W83977AF (IR) FIR chip e.g. used in the Corel Netwinder PC. You may start the FIR service by loading the according module. Linux/IrDA will probe your hardware then. 6. Specific Connections and Protocols 6.1. Printer Connection - IrLPT IrLPT is under heavy construction at the moment. The client side should work, but the server side may crash. · Remove any current print jobs with lprm "*". · If you don't use kerneld do a modprobe irtty. · Do a modprobe irlpt_client. · Check the modules with lsmod. This should show: irda, irtty and irlpt_client · cat /proc/misc. Gives you the minor device-number . It is the first number in the line with irlpt0. · su to root, and do mknod /dev/irlpt0 c 10 . Note: Something like ./MAKEDEV irlpt0 is not possible yet. But maybe load_misc irlpt works, though I couldn't test this yet. · Try to write a small file to /dev/irlpt0 by cat FILE >/dev/irlpt0 (do not wonder about a bad format this is just a first check). For me this didn't always work, but I couldn't find out why not. · The better way is to change your /etc/printcap to use /dev/irlpt0 in addition or instead of /dev/lp1. See Printing-HOWTO for detailed information. · For easy printer setup you may use a printing software like APSFILTER, MagicFilter EZ-Magic (with RedHat there should also be a GUI for this purpose). Make a copy of /etc/printcap before. · Example for APSFILTER with a HP 6P (non-postscript, HP 6MP is with postscript). The two relevant questions are: "Do you have a (s)serial or a (p)arallel printer interface?" Answer "p" "What's the device name for your parallel printer interface?" Answer "/dev/irlpt0" · Restart the print daemon with kill -HUP . If you use another print daemon choose the according command. · Watch whether the connection indicator of your printer shows activity, e.g. the green light above the IR port of a HP 6P/MP comes on (lower left hand corner, near the paper tray). · I couldn't get to manage printjobs larger than approximately 10 pages yet. But maybe this depends on the memory size of my hardware, which is 16MB. There seems to be a problem with the software too, Thomas Davis wrote: "I will ... limit the irlpt, so it won't eat memory when you send a large print file.". Takahide Higuchi reported: " I have been debugging IrCOMM with a printer ( Canon BJC-80v ) with IrDA port and IrCOMM protocol (not IrLPT). I can print a short e-mail text though, it easily causes dead lock when I try to print a postscript with gs." From the page of Thomas Davis http://www.jps.net/tadavis/irda : To use the IrLPT server, you need to perform the following steps: ______________________________________________________________________ /sbin/insmod irlpt_server /sbin/mknod /dev/irlptd c 10 `grep irlptd /proc/misc|cut -f 1` ______________________________________________________________________ At this point, the IrLPT server is ready to recieve print jobs; now; all you need is this simple shell script ______________________________________________________________________ #/bin/sh # while (true) do cat /dev/irlptd | lpr done ______________________________________________________________________ 6.2. LAN Connection - IrLAN · You might connect your Linux box using IrLAN to another network device such as a Linux box with IrLAn, a HP NetBeamer or a Window$95 box with Inrared Network Device support. · Dag Brattli wrote: "If you want to use IrLAN you must modprobe irlan_client before ifup eth0. I had to remove the request_module() stuff since that needed a process context which I don't have in the kernel. " · Run ifconfig eth0 up netmask to configure it with IP-address and other parameters. If the protocol is still running you may start communicating. It is possible to use RedHat's netcfg to do this, since it makes it very easy. Next time you only need to do /sbin/ifup eth0. · Test the network device by pinging to it. For detailed information about further setup see the NET3-HOWTO. · Do not forget to add a route, e.g. route add default gw or route add -host dev eth0. · Ping to another IP now, to test the connection. · For testing reasons I recommend only to use one laptop and one IR ethernet device in the same room. If there are problems look which different modes for the IR ethernet device are possible. Try them. For an ACTiSYS FIR board and dongle you may do: ______________________________________________________________________ irmanager -d1 /sbin/modprobe pc87108 # remove irattach from /etc/irda/drivers, or # substitute irattach with the modprobe! ______________________________________________________________________ On machine 1: ______________________________________________________________________ modprobe irlan_client # not really necessary since irmanager should do this! ______________________________________________________________________ On machine 2 (if you don't have an access-point) ______________________________________________________________________ modprobe irlan_server ______________________________________________________________________ Do not compile irlan_server into the kernel, since it currently does not like that! You should have configured /etc/sysconfig/network- scripts/ircfg-eth0 with a proper ad-hoc network if you are using two machines. If you have an access-point, then the normal setup should be fine. Notice that in the latest patch (2.2.0-irda1) irlan_client will call the device irlan0 by default, but you can change this by giving eth=1 as an option to irlan_client (modprobe irlan_client eth=1 or options irlan_client eth=1 in /etc/conf.modules). The next release of IrLAN will be only one module, so you don't need to think about if you need to have the client and/or the server installed. It's possible to do ifconfig irlan0 -broadcast to stop the AP from flooding you with broadcast frames! That can be a problem if you are connected to a very large Ethernet segment. The only problem is that your machine will then have to initiate all communications and can therefore not function as a server (well, you could probably make a stationary machine somewhere answer ARP requestes on your behalf). 6.3. Palm III Connection - IrOBEX The IrOBEX stuff seems under rapidly improving changing development. So the applications change too. Therefore I just can't give quite exact information. Please see also the report by Dag Brattli at http://www.cdpubs.com/hhsys/archives/66/10brattl.pdf . The /etc/irda script is really only good for configuration of the devices, making the right mknod for /dev/irobex etc, not for starting applications. · Palm III -> Linux 1) Terminal 1> irattach /dev/ttyS 2) Terminal 2> load_misc irobex 3) Terminal 3> Start irobex_app in the irobex directory. I suppose irobex_app is not working anymore. Now you should use the gtk/irobex program instead! You need to have the gtk library installed to use this program. A command line frontend should be programmed by someone. Maybe the programm to use is irobex_receive. 4) Beam something from your Palm III. 5) If everything is successful, you can take a look at a new file that has been created in the directory in which you started irobex_app (or in /tmp for irobex_receive). This file will be named after the object you just transfered. · Linux -> Palm III This should also be possible, but I don't have any further information right now. · PPP Rui Oliveira wrote: "This is just to let you know that with the latest IrCOMM patch (050998) of Takahide Higuchi, I managed to HotSync and establish a PPP connection between my Palm III and my Linux box. I'm using IRLink (from IsComplete) to redirect the serial port to ir. Communication with pilot-xfer works flawlessly. Although I was able to establish a PPP connection, I'm still unable to fetch mail and do Web browsing. This is probably due to connection time-outs. I am checking this out.". Please see the PPP- HOWTO for further information about PPP. · IrCOMM Jon Howell wrote: "I thought I'd try IrCOMM, since the Palm III can be made to reroute serial info to the IR port (using IrLink from IS/Complete, available at www.palmcentral.com), and then you can run a terminal program (like "PalmTelnet" in serial mode) over IrDA. I can only assume it's using the IrCOMM protocol. I've tested this configuration between two palm pilots, but of course I can't know what the protocol running over the IR is. I couldn't figure out what to do with the IrCOMM code. I see from the status page that there's "Client support (should start to get usable), " but I can't find any docs that indicate how it has to be used. " 6.4. Cellular Phone Connection As far as I know some cellular phones use the IrCOMM standard, e.g. Ericsson SH888 and NOKIA 8110. Benny Amorsen wrote: "I have used minicom with the SH888, and I actually got it to establish a connection in minicom (CONNECT 9600...). I could not get it to do anything after that, and hanging up by dropping carrier does not work. +++ worked, so I could hang up that way. I would say that the SH888 is very close to working with linux-irda., and actually it might work in 2.0.x kernels. I only use 2.1 kernels.". Maybe other cellular phones use the IrOBEX standard, see the Palm III section for information about setting up a connection. Carlos Vidal wrote: Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that Nokia telephones do not contain a genuine hardware modem, but something which is similar in principle to WinModems for PC. Whenever Nokia writes about modem communication, they use the name "Windows software modem" (or something similar). Which is actually backed up by the need to use special Nokia software for Windows (called Nokia Cellular Data Suite). Joonas Lehtinen wrote: This is true with 61xx models. Models: 8810, 9000(i) and 9110 should work fine. (They have inbuilt modem). My N9000 reports IrCOMM with linux. To start a communication session with /dev/irnine, for instance, say: ______________________________________________________________________ dip -t > port irnine > term ______________________________________________________________________ Probably you may use cu instead of dip, too. There are also reports about some efforts with the Ericsson GF768 and IR Modem DI 27. Benny Amorsen wrote: The SH888 emulates an IRDA-port when you connect it using the serial cable. Why someone would think up something weird like that is beyond me, but that is the way you get it to work in Windows. Not that I ever managed to make it work in Windows, though. 6.5. Digital Camera Connection Markus Schill wrote: "Great that there are also other people who are interested in using the SONY DSC-F1 IR adapter under linux. Up to now I have only toyed around with the linux-irda software and the serial IR adapter from PuMa Technologies that came with the camera. This is the status. I am using linux 2.0.33 and the latest linux-irda... If I use: ______________________________________________________________________ insmod irda insmod irtty irattach /dev/cua0 ______________________________________________________________________ the adapter starts talking to the camera. /var/log/messages says that SONY-DSC-F1 was found, but no service is started. (Please note, this probably doesn't apply to the 2.2.x kernel versions of Linux/IrDA, wh). There are two programs for linux available that can be used for the communication with the camera via cable: (1) chotplay and (2) stillgrab. They both take a tty as commandline option, so I guess that they should work if the irtty layer of the protocol stack works correctly ... I have not looked at anything in the linux-irda code, yet!). I am not sure whether I understand the stack but shouldn't the irtty make the thing look like a normal tty? What service should be started. " Dag Brattli wrote: "I'm not sure which application level protocol the camera uses, but it is possible that it implements the IrDA(TM) Infrared Transfer Picture Specification (IrTran-P). If you take a look at http://www.irda.org/standards/pubs/IrTran-P_10.pdf, you will see that it is a protocol which is implemented above IrCOMM (not IrTTY!). IrTTY is something we use just to be able to talk to the Linux serial driver. " 6.6. Window$95 and Linux/IrDA Introduction Why this? Unfortunately Linux users are not always supported with the necessary hardware information. Sometimes it is possible to look at this informations in Window$95. Where to get it from? At http://www.microsoft.com/windows95/info/irda.htm you will find a support pack "Infrared Transfer 2.0". It is a self-extracting archive W95IR.EXE with 331KB. With some machines e.g. a HP Omnibook 800 it is necessary to use a vendor specific version of this package (e.g. for the HP Omnibook 800 you may find it on the recovery CD). Especially the ..\windows\inf\*.inf files and the device manager are of interest to look for configuration details. As far as I know Window$NT doesn't support IrDA(TM). About Window$98 I have heard there is no IrDA(TM) support yet. There are also some non M$ products available. Note: Some of them use proprietary infrared protocols: · CounterPoint: QuickBeam 1.15 · LapLink 7.5 · CarbonCopy 32 4.0 · pc ANYWHERE 7.5 · Puma Technology: TRANXIT pro 4.0 Connection between Linux/IrDA and Window$95 IrDA(TM) I suppose there are three ways to connect Linux/IrDA and Window$95: A network connection between two PC's. If you have set up Infrared Transfer 2.0, you will find an IrDA(TM) network device in the . But I couldn't get a working connection yet. Maybe it is also possible to use the IrOBEX protocol. But I don't know which software to use and where to get it. I supposed the necessary software comes with a Palm III, but this seems not to be true. Takahide Higuchi provided IrCOMM support. From his page at http://www.pluto.dti.ne.jp/~thiguchi/irda/ I have taken the following description (I have modified it at little): "With IrCOMM support you can send or receive short messages between a linux box and a terminal program on a win95 laptop! Please add this line to /etc/conf.modules: ______________________________________________________________________ alias char-major-60 ircomm_tty ______________________________________________________________________ Next, make a device file mknod /dev/irnine c 60 64. Now Linux/IrDA services can be started as usual with irattach /dev/ttyS? &. /dev/irnine can be used as a serial device. ircomm and ircomm_tty mod­ ules will be loaded automatically by kerneld/kmod when a program uses /dev/irnine. NOTE: I think "setserial" utility will not work on /dev/irnine. Tips: · To accept login via IrCOMM, use this as a root: First, please enable IrDA and IrCOMM. Then edit /etc/inittab and add a line like this: ___________________________________________________________________ T1:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L -w irnine 38400 vt100 ___________________________________________________________________ and do this as a root: init q. And init will start waiting for incom­ ing IrCOMM connection. You will see your favorite Linux's login prompt from terminal emulator on Win95! · If you try pppd, please consider the -crtscts option to disable flow-control. I implemented some flow-control emulation but it is not tested. · Now my patch reports what kind of features is needed by the peer infrared device. Messages like this will be written in syslog: Sep 4 10:01:02 monolith kernel: parse_control:instruction(0x12) Sep 4 10:01:02 monolith kernel: data:03 · I especially want to know what message SH888 (or other infrared devices except for win95 PC) says. So please mail me your syslog generated during IrCOMM connection! If you have a copy of the IrCOMM specification written by IrDA(TM), please see page 34 or 38, and you will know what these messages mean." 6.7. Linux to Linux Connection 6.7.1. Connection Methods There should be three ways to get two Linux machines connected via Linux/IrDA. · Dag Brattli wrote about the IrOBEX support: "The awakened reader may wonder what prevents the beaming of files from Linux to Linux? Well, nothing!! (but I haven't tried that yet). This means that we now have a "simple" way of beaming files between Linux laptops. I think that this may be the "killer app" we all have been waiting for!" Try to "load_misc irobex at both ends, and then try iroabex_app get on one of the machines and irobex put on the other.". · Via Linux/IrDA network connection. I suppose you have to load the module irlan_client at one machine and irlan_server at the other one. · With IrCOMM support, in other words over a serial line, which could mean minicom, pppd, etc. 6.7.2. Compression Please note this feature is still quite experimental! Dag Brattli wrote: "Just wanted you to know I have just added COMPRESSION support to IrLAP! As you may know, this is _not_ part of the IrDA(TM) standard, but Linux can now negotiate with its peer and check if it has the same compression capabilities). So obviously if you are talking to Win95, Palm III or whatever, you will _not_ get compression!!! This is something which is exclusive for Linux as far as I know! The IrDA(TM) standard says that devices should ignore unknown field in the negotiation header, so we are still "compatible" with IrDA(TM) (have just borrowed an unused header value). If you want to try using the compression code (Linux <-> Linux) you will have to insert the irda_deflate module some time before you actually make the connection. I do it before irattach. The compression standard I have added is the deflate format used by the zlib library which is described by RFCs (Request for Comments) 1950 to 1952 in the files ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1950.txt (zlib format), rfc1951.txt (deflate format) and rfc1952.txt (gzip format). The compression interface is similar to PPP, so you can add as many different compressors as you want. Currently there is only support for GZIP, but BSD compression will be added later." 6.8. Multiple Instances Dag Brattli wrote: "The IrLAP layer has been enhanced to allow more than one instance (so I can use IrLAN on my built-in ir-port, and communicate with the Pilot over the IrDA dongle at the same time) ... So how do you make two Linux/IrDA connections? Well, you just fire up irattach for each of the IR ports you have like this: " ______________________________________________________________________ irattach /dev/ttyS0 & (my ESI dongle) irattach /dev/ttyS2 & (my builtin IrDA port) insmod irlan_client insmod irobex ______________________________________________________________________ 7. Hardware Supported by Linux/IrDA 7.1. Obtaining Information about the Infrared Port in Laptops To get the IrDA port of your laptop working with Linux/IrDA you may use StandardInfraRed (SIR) or FastInfraRed (FIR). 7.1.1. SIR Up to 115.200bps the infrared port emulates a serial port like the 16550A UART. This will be detected by the kernel serial driver at boot time or when you load the serial module. If infrared support is enabled in the BIOS, for most laptops you will get a kernel message like: ______________________________________________________________________ Serial driver version 4.25 with no serial options enabled ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A #first serial port /dev/ttyS0 ttyS01 at 0x3000 (irq = 10) is a 16550A #e.g. infrared port ttyS02 at 0x0300 (irq = 3) is a 16550A #e.g. PCMCIA modem port ______________________________________________________________________ 7.1.2. FIR If you want to use up to 4Mbps, your machine has to be equipped with a certain FIR chip. You need a certain Linux/IrDA driver to support this chip. Therefore you need exact information about your FIR chip. You may get this information in one of the following ways: 1. Read the specification of your machine, though it is very rare that you will find enough information there. 2. Do a cat /proc/pci, though often the PCI information is incomplete. You may find the latest information about PCI device and vendor numbers at the page of Craig Hart http://members.hyperlink.net.au/~chart . From kernel 2.1.82 on, you may use lspci from the pci-utils package, too. The according files for 2.2.x kernels are in /proc/bus/pci. 3. If you have installed the Linux/IrDA software load the FIR modules and watch the output of dmesg, wether FIR is detected or not. 4. Though I didn't use them for this purpose yet the isapnp tools, could be useful. 5. Another way how to figure it out explained by Thomas Davis: "Dig through the FTP site (of the vendor, wh), find the FIR drivers, and they have (for a SMC chip, wh): ___________________________________________________________________ -rw-rw-r-- 1 ratbert ratbert 743 Apr 3 1997 smcirlap.inf -rw-rw-r-- 1 ratbert ratbert 17021 Mar 24 1997 smcirlap.vxd -rw-rw-r-- 1 ratbert ratbert 1903 Jul 18 1997 smcser.inf -rw-rw-r-- 1 ratbert ratbert 31350 Jun 7 1997 smcser.vxd ___________________________________________________________________ If in doubt, always look for the .inf/.vxd drivers for Win95; Win95 doesn't ship with _ANY_ FIR drivers. (they are all third party, mostly from Counterpoint, who was assimilated by ESI)." 6. Use the DOS tool CTPCI330.EXE provided in ZIP format by the german computer magazine CT http://www.heise.de . The information provided by this program is sometimes better than with the Linux tools. 7. There is also a small DOS utility made by SMC, called "FindChip". The package also includes a "FirSetup" utility that is supposed to be able to set all values except the chip address. Look at http://www.smsc.com/ftppub/chips/appnote/ir_utils.zip Warning: The package is not intended for the end user, and some of the utilities could be harmful. The only documentation in the package is in M$ Word format. Linux users may read this with catdoc, available at http://www.fe.msk.ru/~vitus/catdoc/ . 8. Use the Device Manager of Window$95/98/NT. 9. You may also use the hardware overviews mentioned below. 7.2. Hardware Overviews There are some overviews about Linux and infrared capable devices in the WWW: · The Linux/IrDA Project - Hardware Survey at http://www.cs.uit.no/~dagb/irda/hardware.html · Takahide Higuchi at http://www.pluto.dti.ne.jp/~thiguchi/ir/product.html.This page is in japanese. · I have also set up a hardware overview at http://www.snafu.de/~wehe/index_li.html. This list also contains information about infrared capable devices which are not mentioned here (mice, printers, remote control, transceivers, etc.). To make this hardware overview list more valuable it is necessary to collect more information about the infrared devices in different hardware. You can help by sending me a short e-mail containing the exact name of the hardware you have and which type of infrared controller is used. Please let me also know how well Linux/IrDA worked, at which tty, port and interrupt it works and the corresponding infrared device (e.g. printer, cellular phone) you use. You can also help by contributing detailed technological information about some infrared devices, which is necessary to develope an according driver for Linux. 8. GUI If you want to try out a little GUI, you can try to run ircp.pl. You will need the Perl-GTK+ module ( http://www.gnome.org) to make it run. The GUI is far from finished, so don't expect too much :-) 9. Power Saving In the specifications of my HP OmniBook 800 it is recommended to turn off the IR port, if it is not in use, because it may consume up to 10 percent of the battery time. If necessary, you may also try to disable the Fast RRs feature in the IrDA section of the kernel. This option will give you much better latencies but will consume more power. 10. Troubleshooting, Mailing List 10.1. General Information If you encounter problems. Try the following: · Read the FAQ section below. · Look at /var/log/messages and/or /var/log/kern. · Do a dmesg. · Look at the different files in /proc/irda. · Look at the mailing list archiv at http://www.ita.chalmers.se/~svinto/hypermail/irda/, whether your problem is already known. · Ask in the Linux/IrDA mailing list. To join the Linux-IrDA mailing list, send a mail to linux-irda-request@list.uit.no with "subscribe" in the email body. Use linux-irda@list.uit.no to post a message. You are welcome to use this mailing list for posting questions, answers, bug-reports, patches, suggestions and comments. To avoid spam, the list is now moderated, so there may be some time before your posting is distributed to the other list members. 10.2. Troubleshooting Techniques Although I'm not much of a hacker I collected some tricks to track errors or bugs in the Linux/IrDA software. · You may set the debug level in /proc/sys/net/irda/debug to 1, 2, 3, 4. · Use the files in /proc/sys/net/irda to try different parameters like echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/irda/discovery. The /proc/*/irda files are: ___________________________________________________________________ root@duckman:~# ls /proc/sys/net/irda/* /proc/net/irda/* /proc/net/irda/discovery /proc/net/irda/irlmp /proc/sys/net/irda/devname /proc/net/irda/irda_device /proc/net/irda/irttp /proc/sys/net/irda/discovery /proc/net/irda/irias /proc/sys/net/irda/compression /proc/net/irda/irlap /proc/sys/net/irda/debug ___________________________________________________________________ · It is also possible to debug the code. But I don't know how to do this. If you want to use SKB debug code, you may edit irda.h and change /include/linux/skbuff.h (see revision history of snapshot 10-2-98). · For problems with the irda module a utility from the modules package kdstat might be helpful. But I was not able to try this. · "You can now alter the number of discovery packets used (1, 6, 8 or 16) and the timeout between sending them (2-8 * 10 ms) in /proc/sys/net/irda. Please experiment if you have problems discovering your device. My Palm III seems to like 16 discovery_slots and 8 (*10 ms) for slot_timeout. " ... "The absolute minimum for reliable discovery of the IR-610 seems to be 9." · If anybody gets a kernel Oops, then please feed it to the ../linux/scripts/ksymoops/ksymoops program, so that we can find out where it went wrong. Just cut out the Oops lines from the syslog, save them to a file, and then run ksymoops · Dag Brattli wrote: I found out that the cs4232 sound card was giving me several hundred interrupts per second! I removed the sound stuff from my kernel, and the machine is now generally about 4 times faster! Linux/IrDA may get problems if you are running the esound server (esd) on your machine. Both my machines, a 166Mhz Pentium laptop and a 200Mhz Pentium Pro cannot run Linux/IrDA when esd is running. The reason is that esd makes the soundcard give interrups over 300 times/second which makes the serial driver overrun when receiving. This is because the serial driver now uses slow interrupts in Linux-2.2 (everything is slow interrupts in 2.2), so the interrupt- handler schedules on its way out. The good thing about slow interrupts is that packets are delivered much faster, since you don't need to wait for the next timer-tick. The only exception for this is the pc87108 driver which works fine since it uses DMA and will only give a couple of interrupts per packet. 11. Known Bugs If you find a bug, please send a bug report to the mailing list, including dmesg output, and which Linux version, and hardware you are using. Thank you! Sometimes IrCOMM fails to connect (especially when both devices discover each other. You can disable discovering with echo 0 >/proc/sys/net/irda/discovery) A CR (carriage return) character cannot be transfered between two linux boxes via IrCOMM with cat file >/dev/irnine and cat /dev/irnine. It causes a strange thing and freezes your Linux box. Compiling the pc87108 device driver non modular crashes the kernel on boot. Temporary solution: compile the driver as a module IrOBEX may eat some data on receive. The bug is most probably in the user-space side of IrOBEX. 12. FAQ · Q1 - Question: I do not know anything about ports and irqs. What should I do? · Answer: PART A: Hardware settings - 1 Have a look at your hardware specs!!! If not available look at the support page of your vendor, or contact the support hotline. You might also find the information in one of the hardware overviews mentioned above. - 2 Use a current BIOS. Usually available at the support page of your vendor. - 3 Try setserial /dev/ttyS? -g -a | egrep 16550A. One of the shown devices is probably the one you are looking for. Usually it is the second one, but with no guarantee. - 4 Note: What seems like an UART is physically the IrDA controller. For my HP Omnibook 800 this is the VLSI VL82C147 PCI - IrDA controller. These controllers should behave up to 115 200 bps like UART's. But sometimes it is very difficult to get the right configuration. PART B: How to tell the kernel about the hardware settings -4 cat /dev/ioports to see which ports are already in use. -5 cat /dev/interrupts to see which interrupts are already in use. -6 Make ports and interrupts available for use with the IR device, e.g. stop the pcmcia service or include a line like this in /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia: PCIC_OPTS="irq_list=3,4,5,7,9,10,12,14,15" -7 Now try to guess what the right interrupt and port is. Use setserial /dev/ttySx irq M port 0xNNNN to tell the kernel. If there is more then one possible chance try them all (Note: As mentioned in the Serial-HOWTO you should not try irq 0, 1, 6, 8, 13, 14). -8 If you were successful please send the useful parameters to the author, because I would like to include them in the hardware overview. -9 Good luck. It might also be necessary to fine tune the IR serial port with setserial, e.g., setserial /dev/ttyS0 spd_vhi (speed rate 115200). · Q2 - Question: For me, irattach hangs, but recognizes the printer. /var/log/messages shows that irattach found my HP LaserJet 6P. · Answer: The "hang" is normal for irattach. Everything is working right if you see the HP Laserjet show up in the log. "hang" means irattach is polling the IrDA-Devices for incoming connections. If you kill it with the irattach program crashes and /dev/ttySx does not work anymore. The problem is within the irda module, and not with the irattach program. Rebooting is the only thing to do! Next time put irattach in the background by using irattach &. Stop it if necessary with killall irattach. Recommendation by Andreas Butz: To my knowledge, bg should work, too, but I haven't tried it in this specific case. Normally it has the exact same effect as appending & to a command. · Q3 - Question: I get a message like tcsetattr read/write error in /var/log/messages. · Answer: Caused probably by wrong /dev/ttyS* or wrong irq or port. · Q4 - Question: Every setting seems alright, because I get the appropriate messages. But it still does not work. · Answer: Move the devices to within 0.5 meter (1.5 feet). Check that only one application is using the infrared port. Check that both devices are using the same protocol, such as IrOBEX or IrCOMM. · Q5 - Question: I have downloaded the latest snapshot, and compiled it successfully under Linux 2.0.33 running on an IBM Thinkpad 560E. In the absence of any other IrDA machines to test with, is it safe to assume that once the module has been inserted and the syslog reports "irattach: Serial connection established.", is the IR really working, and will it start to respond once there is another machine with which to talk? · Answer by Dag Brattli: Sorry, this only means that irattach has done its part of the job, which is just to start the irda-tty. Maybe the message should have been different, but as I said, it tells that the serial connection between the irda-chip and the irda-driver is established. Note: Support for IrDA on 2.0.x kernels has been discontinued. You are encouraged to switch to 2.2.x kernels and use the newest IrDA patches available at http://www.cs.uit.no/~dagb/irda/snapshots/. · Q6 - Question: At startup modprobe -a checks /lib/modules//net/irda.o and causes the messages: "IrLAP; Missing IrTTY /IrLMP Error no IrLAP connection" (in /var/log/messages and on the console). · Answer by Werner Heuser: Workaround for SYSTEM V style systems: Put a script named for example "ir_rmmod" containing ______________________________________________________________________ #!/bin/sh echo "$0 : remove irda module" rmmod irport.o rmmod irtty.o rmmod irda.o ______________________________________________________________________ in the startup process (/etc/init.d and a symbolic link name for exam­ ple "S100ir_rmmod" in /etc/rc3.d to "ir_rmmod"). (Verify the path for "sh"). For BSD style systems try the corresponding approach. · Q7 - Question by Ho Chin Keong: Is there other way of setting up communication between the 2 laptops besides setting up a LAN route between the two? · Answer by Dag Brattli: Yes and no! One of the IrDA standard, IrCOMM permits you to emulate a serial cable between two laptops, so you can use any application written for serial ports (terminals, PPP, slip, etc.). This is however not yet implemented in Linux/IrDA. The IrLPT (printer) support is actually a subset of IrCOMM, so some of it is working! · Q8 - Question by Ho Chin Keong: If I block the infrared path deliberately for more than 10 seconds, the connection could not re- establish. I have to kill the irattach and restart the whole procedure to start the infrared route. The connection could be maintained, however, if the blocking is less than 10 seconds. Is this part of the design or a bug? Is there any way whereby we can lengthen this time limit from 10 s to longer or infinitely? · Answer by Thomas Davis: This seems to be a bug in the primary side of the IrLAP/IrLMP code. It appears not to send the reset/disconnect notice all the way back up the stack. You'll notice it when IrLPT gets stuck in the query mode while you were trying to talk to a printer, and disconnected/interrupted it when it was handshaking. (and now, it shows up in the IrLAN portion) · Q9 - Pierre-Guillaume Raverdy asked: Should I update to IR lib on my palm and update the system to version 3.0.2? · Answer by Dag Brattli: You should not need to update your Pilot, but it should not do any harm to do so. It is however required if you want to use the IrCOMM library from IsComplete · Q10 - Pierre-Guillaume Raverdy asked: Also any simple source code (especially on the palm side) would be greatly appreciated. · Answer by Dag Brattli: Get the Pilot SDK from Palm. Unzip the examples.zip and take a look at the beamer application. · Q11 - Kai Poehlmann wrote: I have a gsm-phone from Ericsson SH 888 and a linux-computer without an irda-port. I have heard that Ericsson wants to talk with the phone the IrDA-protocol also when using the serial cable... :-/ Is it now possible to use this phone with this IrDA-port for linux and the cable? · Answer by Matthias Lemke: Yes its possible. I tried it 6 weeks ago. But i had same problems like with real-irda. I can connect my phone. i can reset it by ATZ but after ATDT nothing happens. Same with cable or without. But i think you should test newer versions of the port. · Q12 - Jonah Peskin wrote: Has anyone had any success extending the range of an IrDA transceiver? I'm using a Dell Inspiron 7000 notebook, and it seems to have a receiving range of about 1 meter. I realize this fits the IrDA spec, but are there any laptops or devices that can do better than a meter? Why not just get a 1 meter cable? · Answer by tzeruch@ceddec.com:Because manual connection (until things like the Palm Cradle) is cumbersome and time consuming and often creates problems (accessing the back side of my desktop requires contortions). The main problem is that you generally have to make the receiver more sensitive. Basic physics has the inverse square law: the intensity drops with the SQUARE of the distance, so going from 1 to 5 meters requires 25x the power (and battery drain on a portable device), or 25x the sensitivity (and dynamic range - it still has to be able to work at 3 inches). And if you want to do it on the other end, it doesn't simply have to be 25x more sensitive, it must pick up the tiny IrDA pulse needle in a haystack of florescent lights, screen savers, moving shadows... Someone tried it with a Palm III upgrade board: http://home.t- online.de/home/PSPilot/ppppiii.htm 13. Infrared Remote Control 13.1. Resources Remote control via infrared is not the aim of the Linux/IrDA project but is included in this HOWTO to cover "Linux and Infrared" more completely. I found three projects which worked on this topic. You may find some links to current information at http:// www.snafu.de/~wehe/index_li.html. · LIRC LInux Remote Control LIRC is a package that supports receiving and sending IR signals of the most common IR remote controls. It contains a device driver for hardware connected to the serial port, a daemon that decodes and sends IR signals using this device driver, a mouse daemon that translates IR signals to mouse movements and a couple of user programs that allow to control your computer with a remote control. Takahide Higuchi wrote about LIRC: "It's great, and it seems almost complete solution, but it seems there is almost nothing supporting hardware on the market (or need to solder some special circuit ... it is hard work for many people to do so). I believe that LIRC will be more popular if consumer IR support is implemented in FastIR drivers and some common API (for example, a raw IrSocket and common ioctls) is made!". You may find LIRC at http://www.thp.uni- koeln.de/~rjkm/lirc/ · Serial Infrared Remote Controller This is a simple, cheap device that can be connected to any serial port to control most components that have infrared remote controls. It was designed and built on a solderless breadboard and is finally designed as a PC board. You may find this package at http://www.armory.com/~spcecdt/remote/remote.html · Infrared Tools for the COREL Netwinder PC Ryan Shillington wrote some tools to control the COREL Netwinder via infrared, for example: Server Side for the Corel Palm Administrator (deamon). It depends on having ir-simple installed and up and running. With this you can check and change IP addresses, Gateway addresses, setup eth1, etc. You can also run simple commands AND you can check the Temperature, Memory, Load averages, etc. Client Side for the Corel Palm Administrator. You can also run simple commands AND you can check the Temperature, Memory, Load averages, etc. A very basic Infra Red device driver. This does not support IrDA (only unreliable transfers). It looks specifically for Remote Control signals (and Keyboard, etc.). It blocks and passes data up very differently. You may find the tools at http://www.netwinder.org/~ryansh/ 13.2. Infrared Remote Control - IrDA Two of the above mentioned projects use some kind of selfmade dongle for infrared remote control. There is also a description to build a serial IrDA dongle by yourself in the german ELEKTOR 5/97 p. 28 magazine. Maybe someone can merge these two kind of dongles together. For a discussion of the relation between Infrared Remote Control and IrDA I quote from the Linux/IrDA mailing list (shortend and modified by wh): Ryan Shillington wrote: "Remote IR and ASK-IR are very different from FIR or MIR or SIR. Remote IR and ASK-IR are very low speed and low frequency (but very long range) uses for IR. They operate around 2400 baud. SIR operates at higher rates, and is meant for long range transmission where you need more than a few characters pass through (unlike a remote control). MIR is a little faster (less range), but with speeds up to 1.15 Mbps, and FIR (where the devices have to be practically touching) is 4Mbps. The range is inversely proportional to the speed you can send data at. I'm working on drivers for Remote-IR, but you should know that your IR stuff has to support it. Look for protocols like NEC, RC-5 or RC-0 (those are the most common ones). You can use SIR to receive Remote Control signals. Set your baud rate nice and low and data will come through. BUT, from my experience, it's not the RIGHT data. It's not being analyzed in the right way, and as such, you can't compute the checksums or check it with its complement. I have managed to get data in (using SIR) with remote controls. I have been told that SIR will read the remote control stuff differently depending on temperature (although I have never had that experience). " Lichen Wang wrote in response: "The so-called ASKIR in most laptops etc. is not meant for remote IR devices. ASKIR is meant for Sharp Wizard and Zauaus PDAs and some of Sharp's notebook PCs. Sharp stated this long before IrDA was established and is still supporting it to maintain backward compatibility. Apple's Newton had this capability at one time, too. Briefly, ASKIR uses 9.6 Kbps (19.2 and 38.4 Kbps are also possible) asynchronous data format of 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, and odd parity. The "start" bit as well as all 0 bit in data/parity are transmitted as IR square wave at 500 KHz (DASK sub-carrier). The "stop" bit as well as all 1 bit in data/parity are represented by the absence of any IR transmission. As you can see, this is totally incompatible with exiting IR remote control. [..] True. Not only can you use SIR hardware to receive, you can transmit, too. Of course, there are some limitations. Most IR remote controls use 38 KHz sub-carrier. 3 times 38 is 114, very close to 115.2. You can set the UART to operate at 115.2 Kbps, 7 data bits, no parity, and 1 stop bit - a total of 9 bits. Each 3 cycles of the 38 KHz sub-carrier can be received or transmitted as a byte of 0x5B. There are some physical limitations in addition to the fact that the sub-carrier must be 38 KHz. The SIR receiver is not as sensitive to 38 KHz as the IR remote receiver designed for that. The SIR transmitter has a much lower duty cycle and thus can not emit a strong sub-carrier either. IR remote encodes the control signal by turning on and off the sub- carrier at certain specific patterns. Now that you can transmit and receive the sub-carrier, what remains is all in timing. For transmit, you have to know how many consecutive bytes of 0x5B to send for each burst of the sub-carrier, and how long to be quiet between the bursts. For receive, you have to know how many of the 0x5Bs you received are consecutive, and how long the gaps were between these groups of consecutive bytes. [..] My experience with the IrDA link distance of SIR, MIR and FIR is somewhat different from what Ryan said. [..] SIR, MIR and FIR should all work from 0 to 100 cm but in practice: (a) Some devices may have problems at LONG distances. When possible, place the two communicating devices no more than 50 cm apart. Low power devices, such as Pagers, Phones, etc. may have even shorter ranges despite the fact that they use SIR instead of MIR or FIR. (b) Some devices may have problems at SHORT distances. Place the two devices at least a few cm apart. Putting the two devices too close to each other can cause troubles. It is somewhat intuitive that when the link is not reliable we put the two devices closer together. But it is counterintuitive that too close is not good either. The reason is that the light intensity at 1 cm is 10.000 times brighter than that at 100 cm. At 0.5 cm, it is 40.000 times, etc. The IR receiver manufacturers have difficulties to cover this huge dynamic range. We all have problems reading under a 10 W light bulb, but imagine how it feels under a 100.000 W light! [..] The IrDA Physical Layer is totally incompatible with the DASK modulation used in IR remote controls. Thus it is not possible to use the same controller function for both FIR and remote control. However, practically all FIR controller chips do include some additional functions to support remote control. National, SMC, and Winbond (just to name a few) all have such I/O chips. The IR transmitter for FIR and remote control are very similar. I have tried a standard FIR transmitter. It can reach 10 meters for remote control purpose. Thus it performs just as good as transmitters designed for remote control. The IR receiver for FIR and remote control are somewhat different. A FIR receiver can receive remote control signals but can reach only 1 meter whereas receivers designed for remote control typically can reach 10 meters. I have an ISA bus adapter with a National I/O chip that supports both FIR and remote control. I also have IR Dongles that include both FIR and remote control receivers. (Plus a transmitter for both modes.) I cannot find any software to support remote control functions. I did my own experiments in DOS (I cannot run Linux yet.) Anybody interest in this? " Benny Amorsen wrote: "I have a laptop that is supposed to support ASKIR. The mode of the infrared port can be switched to ASKIR in the BIOS. Having to reboot to switch the mode in the BIOS makes it useless, though, so someone would have to find a way to switch on the fly. " Dag Brattli wrote: It should be possible to use IrControl (formerly IrBus) for IrDA compliant remote controls. I currently don't know about any remote controls using IrControl standard, but there should be some out there (anyone else who knows better?). You should go to the IrDA site (http://www.irda.org) and get the physical layer standard (which includes IrControl I think). "Normal" IrDA (using IrLAP) is _not_ well suited for remote control because of the connection oriented nature (and just supports 9600bps for connectionless use). The reason for the limited range is eye- safety they say (but I currently don't know why CIR works better using the same power). I have however seen laptops connect at 4-5 meters (but I don't think that any high speed communication would be possible). Most IrDA chipsets are capable of CIR operation, and it is quite easy to modify the drivers so they talk CIR. Takahide Higuchi has started to look at IrSockets and it would be great if we could open a "raw" Ir(DA) socket which then could send and receive CIR packets. Then all the CIR applications could live in userspace. I know that Corel is interested in using CIR for controlling the NetWinder (and they actually have running code). Take a look at http://www.slashdot.org/articles/98/12/05/0916216.shtml or http://www.netwinder.org/~ryansh 14. Infrared and Eye Safety This section summarizes some ideas and thoughts that were exchanged on the Linux/IrDA mailing list. It is not medically wellfounded, and whoever has better evidence or some more wellfounded source of information is encouraged to contribute it to this HOWTO. The IrDA spec says that the range of IrDA devices has been limited to 1m for reasons of eye safety. Another plausible assumption is that power consumption and IR pollution/crosstalk were reasons for this limitation. In principle there could be danger for the eye, because infrared light is not registered by the eye, and thus the pupil won't close in order to protect the retina from bright IR light sources. This is the same situation as with UV light, which will cause snow blindness eventually, but in contrast to UV light, IR light contains much less harmful energy due to its longer wavelength. The only legal restrictions and medical advices we were able to find on the web were concerned with infrared emissions of heat lamps or in the welding process. This suggests that IR light as emitted by IrDA devices will be harmless, since even the peak power emitted by strong IR LEDs (ca. 300mW) is several orders of magnitude below the power emitted by medical IR heat lamps (up to 500W). For these, however, you are supposed to wear protective goggles, so maybe if you are looking straight into 1.000 infrared LEDs flashing at once, you should do so, too. The effect of infrared light is mostly heat, though, and not an alteration or destruction of the biological cell structure, such as caused by UV light. Though in the specs for the HP OmniBook 800 Hewlett-Packard recommends not to look directly into the IR LED. As stated above, this discussion is only based on guesswork and common sense assumptions about the data found in IR LED and heat lamp specs. If anybody with a better medical knowledge can comment on this, please do so!!! 15. Credits Thanks to: · Dag Brattli - Linux/IrDA core team · Thomas Davis - Linux/IrDA core team · Takahide Higuchi - Linux/IrDA core team · Ralf Zabka · Benny Amorsen · Lichen Wang · Ryan Shillington · Richard Titmuss · Fons Botman · Rui Oliveira · Jon Howell · Carlos Vidal · Joonas Lehtinen · Markus Schill · Bjoern Hansson · Pawel Machek · Ho Chin Keong · Bjoern Mork · Andreas Butz · Tang Ning · The members of the Linux/IrDA mailing list. · The writers of the other HOWTOs which gave me many inspirations. · The developers of the SGML-Tools which provided some means to write a HOWTO. Sorry I didn't start to follow the credits when starting the HOWTO, so probably I forgot somebody. 16. Revision History · v0.1 to v0.4a, 19 March 1998 to 4 August 1998, drafts, not included in the LDP · v1.0, 14 August 1998, release to the LDP · v1.1, 18 August 1998, added info about IrCOMM patch by Takahide Higuchi, minor changes · v1.2, 24 August 1998, updated to linux-irda-1998-08-20 snapshot, added FIR section and revision history, minor changes · v1.3, 27 September 1998, added sections about multiple instances, cellular phones, digital cameras,Linux to Linux connection, the cutting edge - CVS, power saving; some changes in general configuration section, changes in hardware overview section, minor changes · v1.4, 11 October 1998, better description of IrCOMM support, changes in dongle connection section, changes in Palm III section, minor changes · v1.5, 12 October 1998, minor changes · v1.6, 26 October 1998, section about IrManager added, updated to the linux-irda-1998-10-21 snapshot, changed dongle connection section, minor changes · v1.7, 1 November 1998, added remote control section, changed dongle connection section, minor changes · v2.0, 9 January 1999, nearly complete rewrite and rearrangement according to the new structure of Linux/IR which is included into the kernel since 2.1.131, added info about BIOS support into dongle connection section, configuration tool section and CVS section removed · v2.1, 13 January 1999, minor changes · v2.2, 26 January 1999, project name changed from Linux/IR to Linux/IrDA, extended the Troubleshooting chapter, changed the order of the Known Bugs chapter after the Troubleshooting chapter, removed some lint · v2.3, 4 February 1999, added chapter about Eye Safety written by Andreas Butz; spell checking, reworking of Kernel Parameters chapter and additional information by Andreas Butz; minor changes · v2.4, 9 February 1999, changed information about applying a patch file 17. Copyright and Disclaimer Copyright © 1998, 1999 by Werner Heuser. This document may be distributed under the terms set forth in the LDP license at http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/COPYRIGHT.html. The information in this document is correct to the best of my knowledge, but there's a always a chance I've made some mistakes, so don't follow everything too blindly, especially if it seems wrong. Nothing here should have a detrimental effect on your computer, but just in case I take no responsibility for any damages incurred from the use of the information contained herein.