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Mac and Linux Sharing Serial Ports?

Posted by Cliff on from the share-and-share-alike dept.

c-tron asks: "I would like to share several serial ports from a ISDN board in a Linux server to some MacOS clients, because I want to share a pool of modems/ISDN cards to an Apple network. The service should be transparent to the user. Are there any solutions (even commercial)? The Linux side is not the problem (I could do that on my own). The problem is the MacOS client. "

7 comments

  1. Mac/PC interoperability -- DAVE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The following may be what you want. I've never tried it. see: http://www.thursby.com DAVE is the first and only cross-platform networking solution of its kind. DAVE uses the fast, industry standard TCP/IP protocol instead of AppleTalk and is designed specifically for the Apple Macintosh. It is installed on the Macintosh and no additional hardware or software is required on the PC. DAVE is a one product fits all solution for sharing between the different Microsoft platforms and Macintosh systems.

  2. why? by mattdm · · Score: 2
    Why share the serial ports? Wouldn't it be better to make the Linux box in charge of the ISDN connections (bringing them up and dropping them as bandwidth is needed) and then connect the Macs to it via a TCP/IP lan? Or am I missing something?

    --

  3. IP Masquerading by dj51d · · Score: 1

    I would think that you should just be able to set a Linux box that supports IP Masquerading as the Mac's gateway in the TCP/IP Control Panel. I'm just making a guess here, thought, because I don't have any Macs.

    -Dan

  4. Whoops! by dj51d · · Score: 1

    Sorry about that, I missed the part about the serial ports.

  5. Re:And also Win9x clients by rips · · Score: 1

    There are a few programs (not too many!!) that do this on the PC. TCPtoSer is one and I know of at least one other (but don't have any URL's) that do a similar thing. Both have no security. You simply attach a serial port to a TCP socket and this program can connect to it and route data through it as if it were its own physically connected serial port. It works vice versa and can be handy for setting up EQL PPP connections with linux when the only available modems are Winmodems on other machines. The latency sucks however...

  6. And also Win9x clients by Grouik · · Score: 1

    The same between Win32 clients and linux boxes would also be cool. If someone knows about such a product or has any idea on how to do it, please tell us...

    1. Re:And also Win9x clients by Grouik · · Score: 1

      In fact, I'm looking for the opposite: I want a Windoze PC (or a Macintosh for the initial question) to use a share modem on a Linux box. What I need is a way to make a Linux port appear as a local serial port for the win client. So the client will talk to the port as if it was local (no change needed on this side) but all data will be passed to the Linux box. Any idea? Thanks for the help anyway.