Php Serial Port Programming Under Linux?

[timothee]

Hi all,

I need to control a device connected to the serial port of my server but I'm not sure how to proceed. Would anyone have a simple sample of talking to the serial port from linux in php?

I've searched around a little bit and apparently I need the dio extension. However the php.net site states that the extension is only available on windows from 5.1.0 (I'm on linux/Apache2/PHP5.1.4).

Is there anyway to install it on linux anyway or is there an alternative solution to talk to the serial port? Maybe via fopen/fread/fwrite on /dev/ttyS0? I tried that without success, but I'm really not sure I did it the right way.

Thanks in advance for any help!
Tim.