Two instances of BusyBox on separate Serial lines (ttySn)

Question

I am working on an arm board which has two serial ports, accessible through /dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1.

Busybox runs on /dev/ttyS0. I am able to write data on /dev/ttyS1 using 'echo' command like so

#echo "microMolvi" > /dev/ttyS1

I was wondering if there is a way to run another instance of busybox(shell) on /dev/ttyS1, so that I may be able to work with two virtual terminals simultaneously.

Answer 1

After some research I found out that the first shell, that runs on ttyS0, was configured to behave so in the /etc/inittab file.

This line in /etc/inittab was responsible for invocation of the default shell at ttyS0:

ttyS0::respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 38400 vt100 # GENERIC_SERIAL

So, based on my gut feeling, I put a getty on the second serial port by adding the following line in /etc/inittab

ttyS1::respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS1 38400 vt100 # GENERIC_SERIAL

It worked like a charm. Hope this helps someone someday.