Program hangs when closing serial port connection - c

Question

I am reading data through a USB connection as a serial port with the PL2303 driver. It returns successfully when doing an open and when I set they TTY options and non blocking. When I try to close the connection, it hangs. In this state it reads "�" instead of characters.
I can connect to the device perfectly fine with cutecom. Here is the strange part:
If I first connect to the device via cutecom (a serial monitor), my program will connect and close perfectly fine every time afterwards. It reads the characters as I expect them to be read. (No �).
If I disconnect and reconnect the hardware, my program will hang again until I run cutecom.
Since it works after I use cutecom, it makes me think that I am missing something in my initial connection, or connection settings. Here's what I use to connect:
baud_rate = 38400;
fd = open (device_path, O_RDONLY | O_NOCTTY );
In my set_tty_options function:
struct termios tty_options;
memset (&tty_options, 0, sizeof(tty_options));
tcgetattr (fd, &tty_options);
cfsetispeed(&tty_options, baud_rate); // set baud rate
tty_options.c_cflag = (tty_options.c_cflag & ~CSIZE) | CS8; // 8 bit msgs
tty_options.c_cflag |= (CLOCAL | CREAD); // enable reading
tty_options.c_cflag &= ~(PARENB | PARODD); // shut off parity
tty_options.c_cflag |= parity;
tty_options.c_cflag &= ~CSTOPB;
tty_options.c_cflag &= ~CRTSCTS;
if (tcsetattr (fd, TCSANOW, &tty_options) != 0)
{
printf("error %d from tcsetattr\n", errno);
return TTY_ERROR;
}
In set_blocking function:
if (tcgetattr (fd, &tty) != 0)
{
printf("error %d from tggetattr", errno);
return FAILURE;
}
// 0 or 1 byte is enough to return from read
tty.c_cc[VMIN] = should_block ? 1 : 0;
tty.c_cc[VTIME] = 5; // 0.5 seconds read timeout
if (tcsetattr (fd, TCSANOW, &tty) != 0)
{
printf("error %d setting term attributes", errno);
return FAILURE;
}

Answer 1

I think you want to add | O_SYNC to the open flags to insist on synchronous i/o. I doubt that is causing a problem though.
However, I think you want to ignore the break signal, which is reported as a NUL character like you are getting:
tty_settings.c_iflag &= ~IGNBRK; // ignore break signal
Also, you want to be sure the input processing is completely turned off, so that receipt of a backspace, ^C, ^\, etc. aren't triggering any reaction:
tty_settings.c_lflag = 0; // no signaling chars, no echo,
// no canonical processing
It looks like you are already using my set_blocking() function, so that should be okay.

Answer 2

Here's what I ended up doing. I figured this out by basically copying and pasting parts from cutecom's source code.
When opening...
int fd, n;
fd = open (device_path, O_RDONLY | O_NOCTTY | O_NDELAY);
... error check fd ...
n = fcntl(ail_info->ail_serial_fd, F_GETFL, 0);
fcntl(fd, F_SETFL, n & ~O_NDELAY);
You cannot set the baud rate as I was doing. You have to use the defined B38400;
baud = B38400;
Then, I added wallyk's answer.
tty_settings.c_lflag = 0;
Edit: As per sawdust comment, I found a better way to set this to raw input.
tty_options.c_lflag &= ~(ICANON | ECHO | ECHOE | ISIG);
And it works.