How To: Use Minicom on Linux for Serial Port Comunication

If you need to connect your linux server to a cisco device through the serial port this is the best way to do it. This guide is for Debian/Ubuntu but will work with any linux distribution.

First you need to install minicom this is easy using apt-get or yum, just do the following command.

> apt-get install minicom

Once installed you need to find out what your serial port connection is.

> dmesg | grep tty

Output:

[   15.453264] console [tty0] enabled
[   17.339818] serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
[   17.340257] 00:0c: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A

The seial port in this example is at /dev/tty0

Next configure minicom to use that serial port and connect to the cisco device.

> minicom -s

Choose serial port setup, change the serial device to /dev/tty0, change the Bps/Par/Bits to 9600 8N1. Now choose save setup as… and change the name to whatever you like, for example cisco, now save and exit from minicom.

To use this configuration use the following command.

> minicom cisco

Now the serial connection should open up and it will be connected with the cisco device.