FTP (or similar) over serial port of an embedded linux system

Maybe this question should be posted in a linux development group, however the use of a serial port is more typical in an embedded environment, so I try to post here.

I have an embedded Linux box (based on a Raspberry) with a serial port converted to a USB port through a UART-USB transceiver from Microchip. This USB port is seen as a COM port under Windows OS.

I need to do simple operations on the filesystem through the serial port, mainly:

- list files in a directory

- download files

- upload files

- remove files

The user on the Windows PC should launch a simple script (it will be written in Python) that make all the operations in sequence.

Do you know of some technology/protocol that could be used in a simple way?

I have two ideas, maybe there's another one that is better.

The first is to configure a PPP over serial line and use classic FTP server for filesystem operations. However this solution implies that the user should configure the PPP link, but she will not have so much knowledge.

The second is to run the classical console on the serial port, with login and prompt. The python script should type/send commands at the prompt (ls, rm, ...). The download could be done with hexdump command (the python script could convert to binary again). The upload should be done with echo command, writing a ASCII hex file and launching a simple script to convert from ASCII to binary on the embedded Linux.

Do you have other better solutions?

Reply to
pozz
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I have not fully investigated if it might work, but how about rz/sz?

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Reinhardt
Reply to
Reinhardt Behm

They use zmodem - I've done similar things in the past, also with uuencode. (zmodem was a lot faster than xmodem/ymodem back in the day, due to the larger block size).

I'm not sure what would be a good tool to automate listing files, beyond parsing the output of 'ls' and friends.

Theo

Reply to
Theo Markettos

Kermit? I will say that any classic console based plan will probably be easier to implement in the modern age than PPP over serial; ESPECIALLY if you're having to deal with Windows.

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Rob Gaddi, Highland Technology -- www.highlandtechnology.com 
Email address domain is currently out of order.  See above to fix.
Reply to
Rob Gaddi

Why not use the Ethernet on the Raspberry?

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-TV
Reply to
Tauno Voipio

... but with no Ethernet? How odd.

Is SLIP still a thing? I dimly recall it potentially being simpler if no modem was involved.

I have to wonder how automatable a PPP connection is.

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Les Cargill
Reply to
Les Cargill

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