HyperTerminal replacement in Ubuntu - Minicom

Submitted by str on Fri, 06/22/2007 - 23:30

I was kinda surprise that HyperTerminal is not available anymore in Windows Vista. No problem, I rebooted my notebook to Ubuntu and fire-up minicom.

By default, minicom is not installed in Ubuntu, so you need to install it first.
sudo apt-get install minicom
Find the name of your Serial Port
dmesg | grep tty
In the output look for something like "tty". The output in my case is like this:
$ dmesg | grep tty
[ 17.341823] serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
[ 17.342454] 00:0b: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
This means the device correspond to my serial port is ttyS0.
Configure minicom
sudo minicom -s

Use the keyboard keys to select the menu item Serial port setup.
Enter A to change the Serial Device to /dev/ttyS0, and then enter E to change the line speed to 9600 8N1
Using arrow keys, select Save setup as dflSelect Exit from Minicom.
Next time, from the terminal you only need to run sudo minicom in order to access your Cisco box.

Comments

I have to say that this is

I have to say that this is the closest vt100 emulator I've found...although vt102 it still works very well and is simple to use.

Minicom runs just fine as normal user if....

you make the user a member of the 'dialout' group. Then you don't have to run minicom with sudo after the initial default configuration. The Dialout group owns all of the serial ports in Debian/Ubuntu.

Thanks

Thanks CPScott.

comport

Apparently we aren't the only folks trying to communicate with an MRI and Microsoft/Intel took away the connectivity.

USB Dongles

I use a USB dongle because my laptop, like most in recent years, doesn't have a serial port. The information above works great, and Ubuntu (Hardy) picked up the dongle immediately (Belkin brand dongle):

[ 5194.788330] usb 3-4: MCT U232 converter now attached to ttyUSB0

So /dev/ttyUSB0 is the device I used. Don't forget for Cisco/Juniper/Foundry to turn off hardware flow control and switch the speed to 8-N-1 (I'm spelling this out for googlers). This actually works much better under Ubuntu than it did in XP with vendor-supplied drivers, where it would bluescreen my box, hardlock it, or simply do nothing.

Thank you so much for the

Thank you so much for the share... Sir today was my first day with my new UBUNTU device and i was having really tough time accessing my Juniper FW. you post helped me through.... Thanks again

Thanks

I needed a simple explanation on how to connect my cisco equipment to my new ubuntu box, which I never used before.
A simple and quick solution.
Thanks!

thanks its helpful

Nice

Good show, works perfectly. Minicom FTW

Big help for me too. Thanks.

hey bro, thanks for the grep

hey bro,
thanks for the grep | dmesg tty command. It was clear after that...

thx again

minicom installl & config

Excellent concise tutorial. Had my Ubuntu box resetting my new(old) superstack in less than 5 minutes. THANK YOU!

Thanks for the tip on minicom

Thanks for the tip on minicom that was exactly what I was looking for.
BTW, if you want to use a serial terminal for Vista just download the latest version of PUTTY, it can connect to COM ports.

Thnx

Dude, thank you very much. You saved my life. I was using putty to configure Juniper SSG device, but it was not responding to the Backspace key (so you can imagine what difficulties I had, and no typing mistakes were allowed :D ).

Great tutorial. Needed this

Great tutorial. Needed this to change config of my serial port and you made it super easy.

THANK YOU!

Thank you very much man. This was extremely easy to setup and I have been trying to get this stupid serial port to work for a while. I had it all working in under 5 minutes. I am running Ubuntu Lucid Lynx 10.04 and using a CP210X USB to UART cable and I configured my tty as ttyUSB1, because dmesg showed that as the connection made for the USBtoUART cable. You are awesome for finding this, works just like like hyperterminal, but better!