The KSermon Handbook

Bernhard Kuhn, (kuhn@lpr.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de)

Version 0.3.1, 31 DEC 1998

This Handbook describes KSermon Version 0.3.1

Introduction

KSermon is an system-utility to watch the activities on a given serial port. The current state of the TX,RX,CTS,RTS,DTR,DSR,DCD and RI lines are shown by some kind of LEDs. Furthermore, the current TX/RX transfer rates are visualisized using bars and within an osziloscope (this is nice to analyse the transfer characteristics). Additionaly, you can watch the online-time (depended to the DCD-Signal) and the amount of received and transmitted data since the serial-device was opened the first time.

Usage

As KSermon uses the session-management system from KDE, the user only has to start the programm, and then choose the device to observe from the Options->Preferences menu. It is also possible to change the update interval and the maximum displayed transfer-rate during runtime within the Preferences.

There is a build-in digital RC-like low-pass filter. The timing constant "tau" is controlled within the preferences. When "tau" is less than "interval", then the low-pass filter is turned off (due to numerical problems)!

Compiling

For proper compilation, you will have to install the kernel-patch included in sermon-0.23; For proper execution, you will have to recompile the kernel!

Then, just type "make", but be shure, that Qt and KDE are installed and $QTDIR and $KDEDIR are set properly.

Type "make install" to install the binary and the Manual-pages (html). Be sure, that you are superuser!

The program has been compiled for Linux-2.0.36 and Linux-2.2.0-pre1, using the GUI-Toolkit Qt 1.40 from Trolltech, the K Desktop Environemet (Version 1.0) and serialmon-0.23 from Peter Fox (fox@roestock.demon.co.uk).

Known Bugs

Errors are displayed in the terminal, if the size to small to draw an osziloscope.
Better start ksermon, before using a serial line (i.e. with kppp). Doing it vice verca may hang up the line (don't know why).
O-scope does not rescale when maximum rate is changed.
The Preferences look very ugle, when using Motif-Style or large fonts.

Tell me, if you find more :-)

Troubleshooting

Sometimes ksermon needs the suid-bit set. This may be the case when the process using the serial line has suid (i.e. pppd) ?!.
Sometimes it is better to use /dev/cua[0-3] instead of /dev/ttyS[0-3]

Copyright

This program and documentation is copyright B. Kuhn (kuhn@eikon.e-technik.tu-muenchen.de) and distributed under the GPL (see COPYING).

Warranty

There is NO WARRANTY for this program.

This program has been compiled on my machine using gcc 2.7.2.3, Qt 1.40, sermon-0.23 and linux (2.0.36 and 2.2.0-pre1), and it seems to work for me.

Thanks

Thanks to Peter Fox for his excelent serial device extension !

Bernhard Kuhn, Tue Dec 31 02:41:33 MET 1998