Lately, I ran into a very bad issue running GIMX-serial in Linux.
The problem was, I was getting controller state corruption as soon as I was moving the mouse.
To investigate this issue, I just used usbmon to see the bytes sent to the usb to serial converter.
$ lsusb
/* The usb to serial converter is on bus 4. */
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 10c4:ea60 Cygnal Integrated Products, Inc. CP210x Composite Device
$ sudo cat /sys/kernel/debug/usb/usbmon/4u
/* serial port init */
f1c44200 682372285 S Co:2:005:0 s 41 00 0001 0000 0000 0
f1c44200 682372453 C Co:2:005:0 0 0
f1c67d80 682372497 S Bi:2:005:1 -115 256 <
f1c44200 682372506 S Ci:2:005:0 s c1 02 0000 0000 0002 2 <
f1c44200 682372774 C Ci:2:005:0 0 2 = 0700
f1c44200 682372815 S Ci:2:005:0 s c1 04 0000 0000 0002 2 <
f1c44200 682372945 C Ci:2:005:0 0 2 = 0008
f1c44200 682373010 S Ci:2:005:0 s c1 14 0000 0000 0010 16 <
f1c44200 682373188 C Ci:2:005:0 0 16 = 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
f1c44200 682373216 S Co:2:005:0 s 41 07 0303 0000 0000 0
f1c44200 682373312 C Co:2:005:0 0 0
/* 12 bytes = first controller data = sticks centered & buttons released */
f1c67e80 682375905 S Bo:2:005:1 -115 12 = ff7fff7f ff7fff7f 08000000
f1c67e80 682376695 C Bo:2:005:1 0 12 >
...
/* mouse movement starts */
f1c67e80 686006276 S Bo:2:005:1 -115 12 = ff7fff7f 059fff7f 08000000
f1c67e80 686006444 C Bo:2:005:1 0 12 >
...
/* This is the issue: 6+2+5=13 bytes are transferred (instead of 12) */
f1c67e80 686066821 S Bo:2:005:1 -115 6 = ff7fff7f d6c0
f1c67f00 686066840 S Bo:2:005:1 -115 2 = 0d0a
f1c67e80 686066937 C Bo:2:005:1 0 6 >
f1c67e80 686066943 S Bo:2:005:1 -115 5 = 51080000 00
f1c67f00 686066959 C Bo:2:005:1 0 2 >
f1c67e80 686067058 C Bo:2:005:1 0 5 >
...
/* Same issue again */
f1c67e80 686082954 S Bo:2:005:1 -115 4 = ff7fff7f
f1c67f00 686082976 S Bo:2:005:1 -115 2 = 0d0a
f1c67e80 686083063 C Bo:2:005:1 0 4 >
f1c67e80 686083068 S Bo:2:005:1 -115 7 = b5e45c08 000000
f1c67f00 686083086 C Bo:2:005:1 0 2 >
f1c67e80 686083182 C Bo:2:005:1 0 7 >
...
/* Same issue again */
f1c67e80 686123366 S Bo:2:005:1 -115 4 = ff7fff7f
f1c67f00 686123389 S Bo:2:005:1 -115 2 = 0d0a
f1c67e80 686123442 C Bo:2:005:1 0 4 >
f1c67e80 686123447 S Bo:2:005:1 -115 7 = b93c3b08 000000
f1c67f00 686123467 C Bo:2:005:1 0 2 >
f1c67e80 686123561 C Bo:2:005:1 0 7 >I asked google about these specific 0x0a and 0x0d bytes, and found the explanation. The problem is due to a setting of the serial port that maps NL (newline = 0x0a) to CR-NL (carriage return=0x0d + newline = 0x0a).
Why didn’t I get the issue earlier? I recently had a problem with brltty taking control over my serial port. It appears brltty changed the default port settings. Future GIMX versions will disable output processing. A work around for current GIMX release v0.23 is to run the following command in a terminal:
$ stty -opost -F /dev/ttyUSB0