Shell exit when init complete to allow application to use only serial port

Hi All

I am a linux newbee, but experienced with RTOS. I am developing an embedded control application to operate in a restricted access environment.

I am considering Xenomai running on Debian to provide my real time OS.

The issue I have is that there is only 1 serial connection between the SBC and the host system.

I need to share the serial port between the shell and the application. My initialisation scripts should act as follows:

1. Run Built in Test (BIT) executable from init script - report output to the serial port as console output.
2. If BIT passed then start application and close the shell to free the serial port for my application to run it's serial protocol.
3. If BIT failed remain in the shell so can debug the system.

I understand how to design the init script to perform the BIT logic but my problem is how to exit the shell and free up the serial port for the application.

I have googled around and also started to look at linux serial port multiplexors and redirecting console stdin & stdout -> null but not found the answers yet. I

I would apreciate any advice.

Thanks in advance

Don't know much about serial ports but for general bash info grab a copy of the advanced bash scripting guide here:
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/abs-guide.html.tar.gz

You will have to grab the return code of your test ie:

true;echo $?
false;echo $?

You can replace the current process using the 'exec' function but be aware that antything in the script after the exec command will not get executed.