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PL2303 Serial to USB on OSX Mountain Lion (10.8)

Posted in Software

Full credit to Martijn Pepping, over at xbsd.nl for posting this one. I am simply reposting as i found this very handy for using my Aten serial to USB converter (PL2303).

Martijn has built a kernel extension that works with OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion. You can grab the kext file here.

Installing the kext file can be done in a few easy steps:

$ download and extract $ cd /path/to/osx-pl2303.kext 
$ sudo cp -R osx-pl2303.kext /System/Library/Extensions/
$ next you need to fix permissions and execute bits:
$ cd /System/Library/Extensions
$ sudo chmod -R 755 osx-pl2303.kext
$ sudo chown -R root:wheel osx-pl2303.kext
$ cd /System/Library/Extensions
$ sudo kextload ./osx-pl2303.kext
$ sudo kextcache -system-cache

This has saved me a lot of time and effort screwing around with virtual machines and carrying around an extra windows laptop when i want to configure something like a switch or an access point through a usb - serial connection.