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Turning Your Mac Into a Serial Console Server
chrisbw writes "Want to put that old VT100 terminal to use? Mac OS X Hits has a story on how to make a couple simple changes in OS X to enable login on a serial terminal (even over a USB serial adapter if you're on a newer mac). Cool trick for adding a text-based web surfing or email terminal in another room, or remote iTunes control!"
Here's a thought. I could get an old iBook hooked up to a really nice stereo system through a USB converter, and set up this terminal thing, but is there a way to control it through a PDA that supports Wi-Fi, like the Tungsten W? Any terminal emulation software on those?
Because it would be nifty as hell to be able to control all 10GB's of my music through a nice little portable PDA acting as a sort of "remote". Anyone know of terminal emulation software for a Palm?
- Sherman
What's the point? This would've been interesting 10 years ago, but nowadays it's pointless.
You can get to your Mac console on ethernet via the firmware shell (I don't remember exactly how but it's there), so you don't need a serial console for that.
And as for surfing and listening to MP3s, I have Opera on my Zaurus with a wireless connection, talking to the SLiMP3 web server. From there I can control the music on ANY computer or SLiMP3 in the house (PS: the slimp3 software rocks and doesn't require the slimp3 device!). I even made a custom "theme" for the server pages that renders nice on the Z screen.
I can even stream music to my neighbor's PC and control the music from my Z. Now THAT'S a story!
If only the PC bios supported TCP/IP so I could safely reboot and upgrade FreeBSD PCs at work..... tell me how to do THAT (without a kvm).
I'm not sure he's the one that missed the point.. A 486 has serial ports too.
Right, but this is just another chink in the argument that "we can't let you work on a mac because we still need x86 to do "
The more it takes on the functionality of a regular *nix (and the fewer handrolled apps your company has) the more likely you can use a mac, if that's what you prefer.
I see. I guess I did miss the point as well. I see now that the original article was intended to make use of a serial terminal that one already owns, not suggesting that anyone actually attempt to purchase one. My point, and the grandparent to my post was that a cheap PC would make a much better terminal than a Wyse or similar terminal regarless of the OS of the server. In fact the last time I tried to replace the keyboard for a wyse-60, I found I could replace the whole thing with a 486 with Linux for less money.
The fact that Apple tries to do anyting which actually helps others, albeit the small group of others who actually need it, speaks a lot about their business model. Yes, there are plenty of geeks out there who don't need help with this, whch is why I credit Apple for their effort.
There are problems using PCs as dumb terminals. I remember a while ago at work we had a couple of Windows PCs hooked up to some Sun boxes, as dumb terminals. Of course the Windows PCs needed rebooting every now and then. Each time we rebooted them the Suns stopped.
We discovered that the PCs were sending a BREAK on the serial port, when they got rebooted. Once the came back up again, we'd find the Sun box sitting at the open firmware prompt:
ok>
Once we knew the problem, we could just unplug the PC before rebooting, but there were still lots of times someone forgot to do that.
It was VERY annoying
OK, so the article tells us how to enable logins from a serial port. That's great, but that's really only 1/2 the battle.
For various reasons (mainly driver development in a cramped office), I like to run serial CONSOLES. This means I want to see the kernel messages on the serial port, not on a VGA monitor. This allows me to log all kernel messages, even messages from a machine which crashed (hence syslog is not running). Otherwise, its easy for important messages to scroll off screen and be lost when the system crashes.
When running linux, getting a serial console is as simple as passing some parameters to the kernel (console=ttyS0). Similar options exist for FreeBSD, Tru64, Solaris, etc. All of them will use a serial port for a console.
With OS-X, I've been able to enable some extra verbosity on the serial port, and I'm able to get
an openfirmware prompt on the serial port, but I can't figure out how to make the serial port the actual system console. I know it must be possible, because the X serves are supposed to be able to do it.
Does anybody know how to do this on a "normal" g4 with a serial port (g4port)??
Actually, if we're getting pedantic (or historic in this case) the 128K, 512K, and 512KE all sported DB-9 serial ports.