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       Perle Drivers for RIO, SX and IO8 Serial Cards for Linux 2.6.x
               Copyright (C) 2004, Perle Systems Limited.

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Introduction
------------

   This release note covers the installation of the drivers for the Perle RIO,
   SX and IO8 serial cards in a Linux system running kernel 2.6.x.

   The drivers for the SX, RIO and IO8 cards are part of the Linux kernel.
   However, a patch file is required to update the drivers for the 2.6.x version
   of the kernel. The updates for all 3 cards are contained in a single patch
   file, but different versions of the patch file may be required for Linux 
   distributions which have different versions of the kernel.

   The following Linux distributions and kernel versions have been tested.

      Redhat Fedora Core 2
      Redhat Fedora Core 3 
      Suse 9.1
      Suse 9.2

      Vanilla Kernels 2.6.4,  2.6.5,  2.6.9

   To download the proper patch file, please see the Perle Web site

      www.perle.com/downloads
   
   Work is being done to have these patches built into a future release of the
   kernel.

  
Installation
------------

   Copy the correct version of the patch file to a temporary directory. The
   patch can then be applied to the Linux kernel as follows:
   
      cd /usr/src/linux <cr>
      patch -p1 -i /tmp/rio-sx-io8-<version>.patch <cr>
    
   If the patch is successful the driver(s) will need to be enabled using the
  
       make menuconfig
  
   or
  
       make xconfig
    
   kernel utility.  Now rebuild the kernel.
  
   Note: Please consult your Linux distribution documentation on how to rebuild
   and install a new kernel and modules.

   Please see the appropriate User Guide for the serial card being used for
   further details on configuration and use.


Known issues in this release
----------------------------

1. RIO - Suse Hotplug

   When the RIO driver is loaded and the hotplug feature is enabled in the
   kernel, a tty.agent script will be started for each of the possible 512
   ports. This loads down some systems so much that the Linux system will appear
   to have locked up.

   The tty.agent can be disabled by modifying the "/etc/sysconfig/hotplug" file
   so that the "tty" events will be skipped. The following line shows the
   variable to be modified.

      HOTPLUG_SKIP_EVENTS="tty"


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