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macOS: enable CH341 LoRa-hardware path (fix serial truncation, document setup) (#10320)

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* macOS: enable CH341 LoRa-hardware path — fix serial truncation, document setup

Verified on Apple Silicon with a CH341A USB-SPI bridge (VID 0x1A86,
PID 0x5512) wired to an SX1262 (Meshstick variant) that the existing
`pine64/libch341-spi-userspace` lib_dep works on macOS as-is — Apple's
bundled CH34x driver only matches the CH340 *UART* variant
(PID 0x7523), so the CH341A's interface 0 is left unclaimed and
libusb opens / configures / claims it directly via IOUSBHostInterface.
End-to-end test: meshtasticd boots, libusb claim succeeds, SX1262 init
returns 0, TCP API serves the meshtastic CLI's --info / --sendtext flow.

Two changes:

1. **`PortduinoGlue.cpp:497`**: pass `sizeof(serial)` (= 9) instead of
   the literal `8` to `Ch341Hal::getSerialString()`. The function in
   `USBHal.h:61-68` treats `len` as buffer size and reserves one slot
   for the null terminator (`bytesCopied = (len - 1) < 8 ? (len - 1) : 8`),
   so passing 8 produced a 7-char serial — which then broke the
   `strlen(serial) == 8` check at line 502, skipping the auto-MAC
   derivation from serial + product string. On Linux this was masked
   by the BlueZ HCI MAC fallback in `getMacAddr()` at lines 139-157,
   but on macOS that fallback is `__linux__`-guarded so the serial path
   is mandatory and the truncation left `mac_address` empty, causing
   the daemon to exit with `*** Blank MAC Address not allowed!`.

2. **`variants/native/portduino/platformio.ini`**: expand the
   `[env:native-macos]` comment block with a "Real LoRa hardware on
   macOS" section. Documents:
   - Why no upstream library change is needed (Apple kext targets
     CH340/UART, not CH341A/SPI; libusb's `#ifdef __linux__` skip is
     correct for macOS in this case).
   - How to point `meshtasticd` at an existing platform-agnostic
     `bin/config.d/lora-*.yaml` for CH341 hardware.
   - The auto-MAC-derivation contract (now working with this fix).
   - `ioreg` and `LIBUSB_DEBUG=4` diagnostic recipes for the failure
     mode where a third-party WCH `CH34xVCPDriver` *would* claim
     interface 0 (`kmutil unload -b <bundleID>` workaround).

No upstream library forks, no PR chain, no additional lib_deps —
the existing `pine64/libch341-spi-userspace` + libusb-1.0 stack does
the right thing on macOS already.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

* Apply suggestion from @Copilot

Co-authored-by: Copilot <175728472+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Co-authored-by: Copilot <175728472+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
This commit is contained in:
Ben Meadors
2026-04-28 10:54:01 -05:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 4.7 Copilot
parent c0425d7444
commit 9c72767c01
2 changed files with 42 additions and 2 deletions
Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files
src/platform/portduino/PortduinoGlue.cpp
+9 -2
View File
@@ -490,10 +490,17 @@ void portduinoSetup()
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
char serial[9] = {0};
ch341Hal->getSerialString(serial, 8);
// Pass the full buffer size (9 = 8 chars + null) to getSerialString,
// not 8. The function treats `len` as buffer size and reserves one
// slot for the null terminator, so passing 8 produced a 7-char serial
// and broke the `strlen(serial) == 8` check below — masked on Linux
// by the BlueZ HCI MAC fallback in getMacAddr(), but on macOS (where
// the BlueZ path is __linux__-guarded) it left mac_address empty and
// meshtasticd refused to start.
ch341Hal->getSerialString(serial, sizeof(serial));
std::cout << "CH341 Serial " << serial << std::endl;
char product_string[96] = {0};
ch341Hal->getProductString(product_string, 95);
ch341Hal->getProductString(product_string, sizeof(product_string));
std::cout << "CH341 Product " << product_string << std::endl;
if (strlen(serial) == 8 && portduino_config.mac_address.length() < 12) {
std::cout << "Deriving MAC address from Serial and Product String" << std::endl;