Once upon a time, Nicolas Kovacs info@microlinux.fr said:
I have to do some maintenance on a CentOS 7 proxy installed on a routerboard without a video card. The only way to access this machine directly is via Minicom and serial port.
I'm using NetworkManager TUI (nmtui) to configure network interfaces, but Ncurses rendering in Minicom works in the sense that chickens fly and horses swim. What you get is a forest of question marks with a few barely recognizable options lost in between.
Is there some magical trick to render Ncurses interfaces correctly in Minicom ?
I'd guess the TERM is not set correctly. IIRC Minicom by default emulates a traditional VT102 terminal, while the default Linux TERM variable is usually "linux" (which is a superset of VT102). Try setting TERM=vt102 first.
Alternately, if you have screen installed, it can also be used for serial access... run "screen /dev/ttyS0 9600" (change the device and speed as needed). Screen has its own superset of VT102, so you can set TERM=screen, but it is also possibly close enough to the linux terminal emulation to work directly (they're both ANSI supersets with similar extensions).