Linux 6.1 Drops Old Driver For High Speed Serial / TTY Over IEEE-1394 Firewire

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 6.1 Drops Old Driver For High Speed Serial / TTY Over IEEE-1394 Firewire

The staging changes for Linux 6.1 aren't particularly notable but of the code churn is lightening the kernel a bit by dropping the old "fwserial" driver that allows for TTY support over IEEE-1394 Firewire connections...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.1-Staging

[gnarlin]

Who used that in the first place? What was the use case for that?

[AlDunsmuir]

Likely used for serial console connection to/from a Macintosh.

[CommunityMember]

Who used that in the first place? What was the use case for that?

As I remember, it was added to be used as a linux<->linux serial port driver with the intent to allow the same serial port debugging that classic serial ports are used for. That was back when serial ports were becoming rarer, and many systems were starting to include firewire (as the newest best thing that was going to take over the world).

[M@GOid]

As I remember, it was added to be used as a linux<->linux serial port driver with the intent to allow the same serial port debugging that classic serial ports are used for. That was back when serial ports were becoming rarer, and many systems were starting to include firewire (as the newest best thing that was going to take over the world).

By the time this patch was merged (2012), firewire was almost dead, with Apple launching Thunderbolt a year before. I had a couple mobos from that year and none had a firewire connection. One even was a top-of-the-line model.

Probably someone started to work on it when FW was still a thing, but by the time it got ready the need had evaporated.

[rogerx]

Well having a ~2001 Dell Inspiron 8100, the 8100 was one of the last having the hardware. Think, after approximately five years, ~2005-2010 ieee1394/firewire devices quickly waned.

Firewire/ieee1394 was really far better than the slowerUSB-2 protocol, due to each packet bypassing CPU operations, whereas USB-2 processed each packet with a CPU operation. Hence why Firewire was faster than USB-2 protocol. (Speed was certainly noticed while transferring files to/fro from externally attached firewire/USB hard drives.) USB-3 was the nail in the coffin for Firewire along with supporters of Firewire quickly migrating to USB devices.

Most of these ~2001-2005 and later computers were still shipped with serial/DB-9 ports, and/or pins on the motherboards for serial connections, along with firewire. My ~2012 workstation motherboard still had a serial port board header.

Serial ports and likely this Firewire serial protocol are used for early boot kernel debugging, not just Linux but from what I understand, Windows too. (eg. LinuxBios, coreboot, operating system debugging, ... ) Think Windows would be the only one abusing the bandwidth of such a device!