If you don't want qtopia to continually respawn ttyS0, then comment out the two lines in /etc/inittab that cause the respawning.
If you need to be able to sync with a Windows
box, skip to here.
If you already know you need to stop respawning,
but would rather not edit the networking files yourself,
don't worry. Just skip to here.
On my sl5500, the lines are as follows:
# Specify program to run on ttyS0
#s0:24:respawn:/sbin/getty 9600 ttyS0
#pd:5:respawn:/etc/sync/serialctl
My friend Quickening, who told me how to do this, only suggested commenting out the pd:5 line, but I think I found that I also needed to comment out the other line as well.
After you edit the file, you have to run 'telinit q' to get it to take effect.
But before doing that, you also should modify /etc/sync/serialctl.
Comment out the "exec /usr/sbin/pppd" line, and also put a sleep in so that the boot process can be completed before the script runs 'telinit q'.
The last lines of my /etc/sync/serialctl are as follows:
sleep 120
#exec /usr/sbin/pppd /dev/ttyS0 connect '/usr/sbin/chat -f /etc/ppp/scripts/winclient.chat' $IPS -detach
# log telinit runs if you wish. otherwise comment
# the following line out
echo "running telinit at `date`" >> /tmp/serialctl
# now run telinit q
telinit q
Quickening suggested that Sharp's purpose of respawning of pppd using ttyS0, was to enable running a default tcp/ip connection to a host computer, using a serial cable attached to the Sharp I/O Port.
If you need that kind of setup, of course, then you will probably not want to make the above changes.
Instead, if you need to sync with a Windows box, you might need to have your Zaurus emulate a USB mass storage device, to resolve issues with respawning. See this:
http://killefiz.de/zaurus/showdetail.php?app=1768
Another possibility, for those of you who only occasionally need to sync with a Windows computer, would be to stop respawning, and then enable it only when you need it for syncing.
I have been working on a script to make this easier to do. The script just automates making the changes, and you still need to reboot (do a soft reset) in order to implement them. If you want to test the script, then contact me.
Contents Last Revised 29 May 2007