Testing serial communication with socat ======================================== I is useful to test new IO device software in PC without actual hardware. Serial communication of a simulated IO device can be tested either in linux or Windows. In Linux one can use socat to create virtual serial ports connected together. For example :: sudo apt-get install socat sudo socat PTY,link=/dev/ttyS30 PTY,link=/dev/ttyS31 cd /dev/pts sudo chmod 0666 2 sudo chmod 0666 3 Would install socat and create and connect ports “ttyS30” and “ttyS31” together. Initially this gives only root access to the simulated ports. The /dev/ttyS30 and /dev/ttyS31 are links to /dev/pts/2 and /dev/pts/3 (in my test, for you these may be different. :: cd /dev ls -la ttyS3* output: lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 3 14:02 ttyS30 -> /dev/pts/2 output: lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jun 3 14:02 ttyS31 -> /dev/pts/3 cd /dev/pts ls -la sudo chmod 0666 2 sudo chmod 0666 3