How to Connect to a Cisco Serial Port via Minicom

/ Christopher Paquin

Prerequisites

You will need the following. A RJ45 to RS232 (serial) roll-over cable. Shown below

    And a USB to RS232(DB9) adapter (below)

      Connect the RJ45 to the serial port on your Cisco switch. Connect the two Db9s and plug the usb port into your workstation.

      Your should see the adapter recognized as ttyUSB0. You can check this with the command below

      $ sudo dmesg | grep tty
[692949.868426] usb 3-12: FTDI USB Serial Device converter now attached to ttyUSB0

      Install and Configure Minicom

      Next you will need need to install minicom. Since I am running Ubuntu, I will use apt. If using Centos/Fedora you will use dnf.

      $ sudo apt install minicom -y

      Then we need to configure minicom. Start by running the command below.

      $ sudo minicom -s

      Select “Serial Port Setup”

      Change the Following

      1. Serial Device : /dev/ttyUSB0
      2. Bps/Par/Bits : 9600 8N1
      Correct minicom config for Cisco

      Save your config and relaunch minicom.

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