Well the first thing to do is make sure the USB serial device gets
configured, when you plug it in, you should see the serial device listed
in the output from 'lsusb' and there should be messages about it in
'dmesg' (requires root authority). It is possible that the naming
convention for the tty device that get created is different between the
two versions of linux. The usual way is the device gets created
dynamically when you plug in the USB serial device. on my linux,
Devuan which is debian based but unencumbered by systemd, it creates a
device /dev/ttyUSB0 most modern distributions I have seen use names like
this.
Paul.
On 2026-08-01 21:41, Jon Elson via cctalk wrote:
Well, everything is a fight!
The project I'm working on is to get a VMS MicroVAX system working at
VCFMW. The plan was to have serial comm on a Linux laptop connected
to the MicroVAX. I have the serial comm working on a Dell desktop
machine, so I just plugged the same USB serial cable into the laptop,
and NO COMM! I plugged back into the desktop, and serial data works
fine! I'm totally mystified! The desktop is running an OLD Debian
kernel (7.11), the laptop is running a late Ubuntu (24.04.4).
I have no idea why the laptop doesn't communicate. I have tried
minicom, picocom and cutecom, same result on all of them.
Thanks for any help you can suggest.
Jon
