Port existence test failed

[Bart N. <ba...@tr...>]

Hi. I'm new to lirc.

I have one of these RS232 IR blasters: http://www.irblaster.info/
and I had to find a serial port to plug in to the header of my 
motherboard (Asus P5Q-PRO). I also have an Antec case with an IR 
receiver built in.

I want to set up the IR receiver to get signals from the case's 
included remote (Veris RM200) but I'm not too bothered about that just 
yet, so let's ignore it.

At the same time I want to control my TV with the serial IR blaster. I 
found a config for a similar remote to my TV one (not identical model, 
but it looks almost the same, and most of them seem to have the same 
"power" command, which would be a good start) and I've included that 
config in my lircd.conf.

I'm using Ubuntu 12.04 with lircd 0.9.0 from the repository and 
there's also a hardware.conf, in which I have some transmitter 
variables which were set up by the installation script. I haven't 
found documentation on this section but I've edited it (quite possibly 
wrongly) and it currently looks like this:

    #Chosen IR Transmitter
    TRANSMITTER="Serial Port (UART) : LG TV"
    TRANSMITTER_MODULES="lirc_dev lirc_serial"
    TRANSMITTER_DRIVER="default"
    TRANSMITTER_DEVICE="/dev/ttyS0"
    TRANSMITTER_SOCKET=""
    TRANSMITTER_LIRCD_CONF="/home/bjn/lgremote-AKB72915207"
    TRANSMITTER_LIRCD_ARGS=""

Now, lirc starts without a problem (as far as I can tell) with its 
init script. Then I try to send the power signal with

    irsend SEND_START LG_AKB72915207 power

but the transmitter, when I look at it through a digital camera, is 
dark (I see bright lights when I press buttons on my remote).

The output of
    $ dmesg | grep lirc
tells me
    [ 5304.480211] lirc_serial: module is from the staging directory, the quality is unknown, you have been warned.
    [ 5304.480612] lirc_serial: port existence test failed, cannot continue
    [ 5304.481256] lirc_serial: probe of lirc_serial.0 failed with error -22
    [ 5304.481394] platform lirc_serial.0: lirc_dev: driver lirc_serial registered at minor = 0

"Port existence test failed" sounds like a potential issue... But I 
don't know how to test if my serial port is working or not.

I don't know if it's the serial port, the IR blaster or my 
configuration. Please help me troubleshoot.

Full config files:
    /etc/lirc/hardware.conf: http://sprunge.us/BEdh
    /etc/lirc/lircd.conf: http://sprunge.us/efgK
    /home/bjn/lgremote-AKB72915207: http://sprunge.us/Zdeg

Thanks very much.

--bart