I have a server with 8 COM ports which I would like to make accessible via TCP ports, I've done quite a bit of research and tried numerous solutions including ser2net etc. All of which unfortunately don't support multiple concurrent connections, I want to be able to connect more than one client to each port.
I'm using a VM so I'm open to any OS, but was hoping to use a lightweight Linux distro.
Appreciate any help, thanks
It isn't entirely clear what you want to do but it may be possible that socat will enable you to access a serial port on one computer from a TCP connection from another computer.
See EXAMPLE FOR REMOTE TTY (TTY OVER TCP) USING SOCAT
You have a host with some serial device like a modem or a bluetooth interface (modem server) You want to make use of this device on a different host. (client)
1) on the modem server start a process that accepts network connections and links them with the serial device /dev/tty0:
$ socat tcp-l:54321,reuseaddr,fork file:/dev/tty0,nonblock,waitlock=/var/run/tty0.lock2) on the client start a process that creates a pseudo tty and links it with a tcp connection to the modem server:
$ socat pty,link=$HOME/dev/vmodem0,waitslave tcp:modem-server:54321
socat supports forking and has other features that may be useful in achieving multiple concurrent connections.
The above example assumes you have some client application which works with a serial connection, the client instance of socat provides the local end of a relay for a local virtual serial port to a remote real serial port.
If you have an application that doesn't expect a local serial port but which communicates over TCP direcly, you wouldn't need the local instance of socat.
For multiple serial ports you could start multiple instances of socat, each of which can handle multiple consecutive connections.
