Fedora Linux: How to console into your Cisco router

This is my first attempt using Linux, and I am going to start learning Linux uing Fedora Linux 😀

My first attempt is to learn how to use Linux environment to console into my cisco routers like I am doing in Windows with PuTTY.

There are two softwares I found in Linux that can do virtual console terminal. A text based one – minicom. A GUI one – CuteCom.

For some reason I could not make Cutecom open a tty session, however I have made it possible with minicom 😀

Verify serial port status

First thing is to identify which tty is associated with my serial com port:

[cyrus@cyruslab ~]$ dmesg |grep ttyS
[    2.266367] serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
[    2.511359] serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
[    2.512365] 00:09: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
[    2.513144] 00:0a: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
[cyrus@cyruslab ~]$

 

Install the minicom package

From the panel click:

System > Administration > Add/Remove Software

Search for minicom.

Configuring minicom

[cyrus@cyruslab ~]$ minicom -s

root user is needed to make changes to the configuration.

[cyrus@cyruslab ~]$ su –
Password:
[root@cyruslab ~]#

 

 

 

Use minicom to console to router

[root@cyruslab ~]# sudo minicom

Terminate minicom session

DO NOT just close the terminal window, the ttyS0 session is still alive! If you did that, kill the ttyS0 session by using:

[root@cyruslab ~]# killall minicom

Be sure you are a root user, a lot of privileges only availabe for root user. The command killall is only available for root user.

To properly terminate the minicom session, press CTRL + A, then press X, a prompt will appear to confirm whether you really need to exit minicom or not.

 

Thanks Andrey for the guidance 😀