Using minicom for remote console access

For those that don't have a serial console server, this may be an alternative you'd want to use, instead of hauling your laptop around to get console access to devices.

I have a switch in the lab that I needed console access to. I really didn't feel like taking my laptop over and connect the blue Cisco console cable to it. Instead, I decided to connect the blue cable to a serial port on a Linux server in the lab. From there, I SSH'd into the Linux server and set up minicom.

I ran from my prompt "minicom -s" to run the setup and performed the following configuration steps.

• Select "Serial port setup"
• A - Serial device : /dev/ttyS0
• E - Bps/Par/Bits : 9600 8N1
• F - Hardware Flow Control : No
• G - Software Flow Control : No
• Save setup as dfl
  

Your network device console may need different settings, but that should work in most cases.

After going through the initial setup and save it, you should be able to connect to your device by just making sure the console cable is connected and typing "minicom".