How to log a local serial device in on a console server serial port

When a serial port on the console server is configured in Terminal Server mode an agetty program will run in the console server monitoring that serial port awaiting an incoming terminal login session. 

• From the Serial&Network:Serial Ports select Terminal Server Mode for the serial port 
• Specify the Terminal Type (vt220, vt102, vt100, Linux or ANSI) to be used.

 

Alternately all console server firmware versions allow you to directly configure a getty program (either agetty or mgetty) on any of the serial ports from the command line. The getty will configure the port appropriately and wait for a connection to be made. If you set hardware flow control then an active connection on a serial device is usually indicated by the Data Carrier Detect (DCD) pin on the serial device being raised. When a connection is detected, the getty program issues a login: prompt, and then invokes the login program to handle the actual system login. 

To manually configure a serial port to run a getty you must first disable portmanager on that serial port and then spawn agetty:

• To disable portmanager on the port you wish to run the terminal on by changing the port's "mode" from portmanager tounused and then restarting portmanager 
  
  # vi /etc/config/config.xml 
  
  <port7> 
  <charsize>8</charsize>
  <flowcontrol>None</flowcontrol>
  <mode>unused</mode>
  <parity>None</parity>
  <speed>9600</speed>
  <stop>1</stop>
  <syslog> 
  <facility>Default</facility>
  <priority>Default</priority>
  </syslog>
  </port7>
  
  # pkill -HUP portmanager
  
  
• Then enable a terminal server on the appropriate serial port, and restart init:
  
  # vi /etc/config/inittab
  
  port07:unknown:/bin/agetty ttyS6 9600 vt220
  
  # kill -HUP 1 
  
  More detailed information is available from Linux Network Administrators Guide