[Cialug] Connecting to Serial Console w/ USB

[Chris K.]

Its the laptop I am trying to connect with that does not have the 
serial, only has USB.  The server has serial ports in abundance.

Nathan Stien wrote:
> On 1/25/07, lister at kulish.com <lister at kulish.com> wrote:
>> But has anyone successfully connected to a serial console on a server 
>> via
>> a usb/serial dongle?
>
> I have not done it, but I can imagine how I'd do it.
>
>> I need to hookup to a server with my laptop, but of course it doesnt 
>> have
>> a serial port.  Go figure.
>
> The server doesn't have a serial port?  Or the laptop?  Since the case
> of the laptop not having a serial port would be trivial, I assume you
> mean the server lacks the port.
>
>> Laptop is Windows based.  Server is already setup for console access.
>
> When you plug in the serial dongle to the server's USB port, it should
> attach to a device node like /dev/ttyUSB0.  You might do a "dmesg |
> grep ttyUSB" to see if you can find out which one it is.  If it
> doesn't show up, it may be that your USB-serial device doesn't have a
> driver in the server's kernel.
>
> You would then go into your /etc/inittab and put something like this,
> assuming you use getty:
>
> T0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyUSB0 9600 vt100
>
> Replace ttyUSB0 with the appropriate device node.  At least on Debian,
> there are some helpful comments in the file to make it easy to
> understand.  You'll have to reboot or otherwise work back through some
> runlevels.  Read the man pages for inittab and getty to get some more
> thorough insights into this.
>
> Disclaimer: I am also just telling you how I would try to do this if I
> had to, and I have not actually verified that this works.  :-)  If I
> have steered you wrong, please let me know!
>
> - nps
>