Introduction

In the old days, PCs always came with RS-232 serial ports, allowing them to be connected to various devices such as modems, bar code readers, PDAs, etc. I use serial ports for programming microcontrollers, so I was surprised to find that my new laptop didn't come with a serial port. Computers without serial ports are becoming more and more common, since 90% of consumers don't need them; luckily for those of use who do need serial ports, USB to serial adapters are available on the web and in local stores. I chose to purchase a keyspan high-speed USB-serial adapter, since the packaging claimed support for linux; but the instructions here should apply to any working usb-serial device.

The Problem

When I plugged in the device, a port /dev/tts/USB0 was automatically created. Keep in mind that I am using Slackware 10.1 and kernel 2.6.10; your distribution might give you slightly different results. Now, here's the problem: that device was created without user read/write permissions! 

  bash-3.00$ ls -l /dev/tts/USB0
  crw-rw----  1 root uucp 188, 0 2005-03-06 17:31 /dev/tts/USB0

It's great that everything worked automatically, but of course, if I can't access the device from my account, it is pretty much useless to me. This is a typical linux problem; the system gets you 99% of the way there, leaving you with the nearly impossible challenge of covering that last 1%.

The Solution

Open up the file /etc/group and find the line beginning with uucp. You need to add your username to the list of users at the end of this line, so that it looks like 

  uucp::14:uucp,paul
Log out and log in again; thats it!