OpenManiak.com - MINICOM - The Easy Tutorial

Other Minicom
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Minicom is a serial communication program to access a network or security device through its console port.
This tool is similar to Hyper Terminal, which is by default available on a Microsoft Windows system.

Let's install Minicom:

#apt-get install minicom
Check if you have active serial ports:

#dmesg | grep tty
[17179573.660000] serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
[17179573.660000] serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A

The read and write permissions are required on the /dev/ttyS0 file. The dialout group, which is the default group owner of the file, has already these rights.
You can see it with the following command:

#ls -la /dev | grep ttyS0
crw-rw---- 1 root dialout 4, 64 2007-02-26 22:55 ttyS0

If the permissions are not set as above, you can configure them as follow:

#chown root /dev/ttyS0
#chgrp dialout /dev/ttyS0
#chmod 660 /dev/ttyS0
Now we are ready to add your Debian or Ubuntu user in the dialout group:

#adduser your_user dialout

To see which users are members of the dialout group, open the /etc/group file and look for the line beginning with dialout.

#cat /etc/group | grep dialout
dialout:x:20:cupsys,your_user

We can now start Minicom:

#minicom -s

minicom configuration Serial port setup minicom configuration change which setting

minicom configuration save setup as dfl minicom configuration exit minicom initializing modem

minicom welcome

To leave Minicom: Ctlr A -> Z -> X
The default config will be saved as /etc/minicom/minirc.dfl
The next time you want to use Minicom you just have to enter the following command:

#minicom
To save your Minicom settings on a specific file:

#minicom -s

minicom configuration save setup as

The config will be saved as /etc/minicom/minirc.config1
To start Minicom with settings configured on a specific file:

#minicom -s config1