[LinuxPPS] LinuxPPS - odd behaviour. (Please Read)

[clemens at dwf.com]

I just read the comments in one of the nmea patch  postings, 
and saw something that I hadn't realized before.

Namely, that the "serial" device (I dont know how to describe it in
any other way,- possibly "parent") for a given pps<x> device
must be open for the pps<x> device to function.

I checked it and that is true.

This is a truly odd Unix/Linux behaviour.  Isnt there any way
around this 'problem' ?

It would mean, that IF one had the serial data on
    /dev/ttyS0
and the PPS data coming in on /dev/lp
that one would have to open
    /dev/ttyS0
    /dev/lp
and /dev/pps<x>

If nothing else, that's ugly.
To do it auto-magically is going to take some ugly code that
is Linux specific in NTP and we've tried to avoid OS specific code
whenever possible.
-- 
                                        Reg.Clemens
                                        reg at dwf.com