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Recently, there was a requirement for me to connect a laptop running Linux to a Cisco router in order to configure it - for some inexplicable reason, it had decided not to allow administration over the local network. One might think that one of the many terminal programs included with Red Hat Linux 6.1 might facilitate serial port communication, but I could not find one which seemed to allow it.
The C-Kermit package
seems to be the most useful piece of software for connecting to devices via the
serial port. I downloaded the
cku196.linux-i386-rh6.1
binary for Red Hat Linux 6.1, made it executable, became root and
started it up.
C-Kermit permits lots of different activities. However, I was only interested in one thing...
The Linux machine being used has the serial port configured as the device
/dev/ttyS2. Within C-Kermit
the following command must be issued to recognise the serial port:
set line /dev/ttyS2
The Cisco documentation states that a connection with the following properties be used:
| Connection speed | 9600 baud |
|---|---|
| Stop bit | 1 |
| Parity | None |
| Flow control | None |
To do this within C-Kermit the following commands become necessary:
set speed 9600 set stop-bits 1 set parity none set flow-control none
The final step is to connect:
connect
At this point, the device involved (in this case the Cisco router) should send
some data, although it might need prompting by pressing the Return
key a few times. Use the stated escape sequence to stop the session - for me
this was Control-\ followed by C.