Hi all,

Using Debian Linux 64 bit if it matters.

I have a neat little board which has a DB-9 connector on one end and a 4 pin USB 2.0 header on the other end (a Startech ICUSB232INT1) which uses the FTDI232RL chip and a TTL to Serial level converter.

It works fine, and since it's plugged into a motherboard USB header, it's available right away.

It exists as /dev/ttyUSB0 and, if possible, I would like to change it's name to something else.

I would guess the solution to my request lies in UDEV, but I have no clue how to do it.

Since I have a lot of other adapters which I sometimes use (which have either /dev/ttyUSBx or /dev/ttyACMx names), I would like the "permanent" USB0 device named something else so I can easily see which device I am working with at the time.

If this is possible, I would greatly appreciate some guidance. Thanks!

You are right.

The dynamic device directory and the udev rules infrastructure make it possible to provide stable names for all disk devices—regardless of their order of recognition or the connection used for the device. Every appropriate block device the kernel creates is examined by tools with special knowledge about certain buses, drive types or file systems. Along with the dynamic kernel-provided device node name, udev maintains classes of persistent symbolic links pointing to the device:

Thanks for the reply. Can you give me a few pointers as to how to do this? I tried writing a UDEV rule and the best I could accomplish was to get a symlink to the device, but the original device name persisted (that is, the device now had two names). What I need is for "/dev/ttyUSB0" to become "unused" and given some other name so that when ANOTHER similar device is plugged in, IT becomes ttyUSB0. Make sense?

You can create links to devices and name them the way you want.

Nope. It may well have more than two names - why do you care ?.

Everyone uses the alias they assign and probably soon forget the original name even still exists.