December 2005
Beginner
480 pages
13h 27m
English
Content preview from Linux Server Hacks, Volume TwoBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
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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. ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.