Hack #37. Turn Your Laptop into a Makeshift Console
Use minicom and a cable (or two, if your laptop doesn't have a serial port) to connect to the console port of any server.
There are many situations in which the ability to connect to the serial console port of a server can be a real lifesaver. In my day-to-day work, I sometimes do this for convenience, so I can type commands on a server's console while at the same time viewing some documentation that is inevitably available only in PDF format (something I can't do from a dumb terminal). It's also helpful if you're performing tasks on a machine that is not yet hooked up to any other kind of console or if you're on a client site and want to get started right away without having to learn the intricacies of the client's particular console server solution.
Introducing minicom
How is this possible? There's an age-old solution that's provided as a binary package by just about every Linux distribution, and it's called minicom. If you need to build from source, you can download it at http://alioth.debian.org/projects/minicom/. minicom can do a multitude of great things, but what I use it for is to provide a console interface to a server over a serial connection, using a null modem cable (otherwise known as a crossover serial cable).
Actually, that's a big, fat lie. My laptop, as it turns out, doesn't have a serial port! I didn't even look to confirm that it had one when I ordered it, but I've found that many newer laptops don't come with one. ...