[CentOS] is it possible to login to a switch via RS232 / serial port from the shell?

Sun Jun 22 21:26:29 UTC 2008
Rudi Ahlers <Rudi at SoftDux.com>

Bent Terp wrote:
>> I have changed the comms in minincom to use /dev/tty0 & the baud rate to
>> 9600, yet I can't seem to connect with minicom. Does anyone know how to
>> connect to a serial device from the console?
>>     
>
> This works for me with our Cisco console cables:
> sudo yum install picocom
> sudo picocom /dev/ttyS0
>
> BR Bent
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>
>   
I have just noticed that there's no serial device loaded, yet I know 
it's enabled in the BIOS.

The only reference I could find in dmesg for serial ports is this:

Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 4 ports, IRQ sharing enabled
r8169 Gigabit Ethernet driver 2.2LK-NAPI loaded
GSI 20 sharing vector 0xC0 and IRQ 20
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:01:00.0[A] -> GSI 20 (level, low) -> IRQ 20
eth0: Identified chip type is 'RTL8169s/8110s'.



[root at venus ~]# more /var/log/dmesg | grep ser
Memory: 433664k/532480k available (2358k kernel code, 89936k reserved, 
1325k data, 172k init)
PCI: BIOS Bug: MCFG area at d0000000 is not E820-reserved
pnp: 00:08: ioport range 0x400-0x4bf could not be reserved
- User ID: CentOS (Kernel Module GPG key)
serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60,0x64 irq 1
serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60,0x64 irq 12
8250_pnp: Unknown symbol serial8250_unregister_port
8250_pnp: Unknown symbol serial8250_register_port


So, it seems like there's no serial port in the Xen kernel, or am I 
missing something? How do I get the serial port to work in CentOS 5.1 + Xen?

-- 

Kind Regards
Rudi Ahlers
CEO, SoftDux

Web:   http://www.SoftDux.com
Check out my technical blog, http://blog.softdux.com for Linux or other technical stuff, or visit http://www.WebHostingTalk.co.za for Web Hosting stuff