[TriLUG] acessing remote character devices

[Alan Porter]

I am working on an application that needs to poll character
devices that are physically located all over the place.
Each device is attached to an embedded Linux system, and
each is accessible through a character device in /dev.


 SERVER
    |
 +--+---+------+------+
 |      |      |      |
BOX1   BOX2   BOX3   BOX4
dev1   dev2   dev3   dev4


Before I create a custom server program, I was wondering
if there was some network magic that I could sprinkle on
the problem.

Basically, from the server, I want to open several device
files (dev1, dev2, dev3).  These devices are actually
located on other machines on the network, but I'd like
them to appear as device files on my own machine and be
accessible just like local character devices.

Some ideas that popped into my head:
 - netcat - I hear that's the Swiss Army Knife for networks
 - access box1:/dev/dev1 via NFS (???)

Is there some quick-n-dirty way to open a character device
on a remote machine as if it were local?  I bet someone has
written a tool to do this, but I have no idea what to search
for.


Alan




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