4. Serial Port Applications

This section covers applications and some configuration information that you can use to look at your serial console, now that your Linux boxes are talking to the serial port.

4.1. Minicom

Minicom is one of the easier serial port applications to use. It is curses based, so it's a full screen application with a status bar, menus, and an easy-to-use interface. It is installed on most distributions, and initially has to be run as the root user. In some cases, minicom will be installed suid root, so anyone will be able to access the configurations. Check the documentation for your particular distribution to see how it's configured.

Security of minicom is set by the /etc/minicom.users file. Usernames can that are listed along with a configuration can use the listed configurations. This allows only authorized users to connect to the serial ports.

Minicom creates individual configurations to separate files. Configure the serial port as needed, then save the configuration. Files are kept in /etc with a prefix of minirc.