Before accessing devices connected via RS-232 or USB serial:
- Configure remote AAA or local user permissions (or skip this to test using the default root user, in this article we use operator as an example username)
- Configure per-port remote access services
Note: This article details accessing ports configured in Console Server Mode. For details on alternative ports, refer to this article.
Access to device consoles is brokered by Opengear's built-in portmanager. portmanager converts serial data to and from network data, enabling access to out-of-band consoles using network protocols such as SSH and Telnet. There are many ways to connect to portmanager. Broadly speaking, you can connect via:
- The portmanager chooser menu
- SSH directly to a port using a number of conventions
- The web UI's built in AJAX client
portmanager chooser
This menu allows you to interactively select from a list of permitted consoles and start a session:
1: Router 4: PDU 6: ISR 8: Switch
33: Front, Upper 34: Front, Lower
Connect to port >
There are four ways to invoke the chooser:
- SSH to the Opengear device, login adding :serial to your username (e.g. root:serial or operator:serial)
- For a user in the admin or users groups, run pmshell from the Opengear CLI
- For a user in the pmshell group, login with your regular username and password and the menu automatically loads
- When connected to a port, use the chooser escape sequence of <enter>~m
Connect directly to a port
For ports that have been configured with the SSH access service, there are four conventions that allow you to connect directly to a port and start a session, bypassing the chooser.
- Use a network client to connect to the service network Base Port + serial port number
- e.g. the SSH base port is TCP port 3000, so SSHing to TCP port 3001 directly connects you to serial port 1
- SSH to the Opengear device, login adding :portXX to your username (e.g. root:port01 or operator:port01)
- SSH to the Opengear device, login adding the :port-label to your username (e.g. root:Router or operator:Router)
- Configure per-port IP aliases
Examples of the first three conventions using SecureCRT SSH GUI client for Windows or Mac, where 70.33.235.190 is the IP address of the Opengear device:
Examples of the first three conventions using OpenSSH CLI client for Linux or Mac (and other Unix-like):
# SSH to serial port 1 by TCP port ssh -p 3001 -l operator 70.33.235.190 # SSH to serial port labelled Router ssh -l operator:Router 70.33.235.190 # SSH to serial port 1 by port name ssh -l operator:port01 70.33.235.190
Connect via the web UI
Ports that have been configured with the Web Terminal access service can be accessed using the terminal emulator built-in to the Opengear web UI. The terminal emulator is based on open source shellinabox and uses pure AJAX so requires no special runtimes such as Java.
Note: Web Terminal is not a fully featured terminal emulator like a native SSH client and is limited by the web browser security model, so some operations such as copy and paste are not supported by every browser.
- Login to the Opengear web UI as an admin or users group user
- Click Manage -> Devices
- Use the Managed Devices tab or Serial Ports tabs to sort by device groupings or sequentially
- Locate the port and click Connect: via Web Terminal
Note: If your browser and operating system are configured with an ssh:// protocol handler, you may also click Connect: via SSH to launch the local SSH client.
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