That allowed a second and third monitor to have terminals connection to the same screen session so I could view multiple logs simultaneously in full screen (big stacktraces don’t always fit as well into screens ‘split’ functionality. Screen usefully allows for multiple incoming connections too. I could then easily trace events through the architecture. (5 minute ssh timeouts everywhere – those loops were useful). Each would spawn the required number of terminal sessions, set titles with the servers’ names and sit in wait loops for me to hit enter to spawn each ssh connection to view the logs. I had several screenrc files setup that I could select depending on which servers I needed to monitor. I usually needed to watch or view logs from several of these simultaneously. One of previous gigs was working with a large distributed architecture consisting of over 20 classes of server, all with redundancies. Whether serial, working over ssh, or simply working with multiple terminals locally, screen is the way. Unless you want to write udev rules for every device… But (IMHOP) those ever-renumbering USB serial ports just make things seem cheap and unfinished. I guess once you know your way around /dev and the setup area of whatever software you are using it isn’t the end of the world. Is this new USB toy ttyUSB0, or ttyACM0? Why isn’t my sketch uploading? Oh, for some reason my microcontroler just became ttyUSB1 instead of 0. There’s something to be said for plugging in and knowing your device is TTYS0 or COM1 every time. I am surprised I don’t see real serial ports used in more of the sorts of projects we see here though. More expensive cable, people don’t want to have to learn which connector goes to what, USB supplies power, etc… I get why consumer peripherals don’t have much use for a serial port. Surely this wasn’t marketed for any use that would require a serial port but there it is! I just checked the back of this little Dell office box I am typing on. Even a parallel port header isn’t exactly hard to find. If not then I bet there’s a header on your motherboard somewhere that just needs hooked up. There is probably one or two serial ports there. If you are on a desktop check the little panel in the back where the motherboard’s built in connectors are. Now, when serial ports are supposedly dead they come built into most motherboards. They lived on a separate expansion card, maybe it was the same card as the hard drive and floppy controller or maybe it was it’s own card. “Back in the day” when common peripherals like mice, printers and modems actually used serial ports they were usually an accessory. “You might think the serial port is dead,” Posted in Linux Hacks Tagged linux, rs232, serial port, terminal Post navigation

Of course, like everything else these days, you can also get your terminal in the browser. You might think the serial port is dead, but it really just transformed into a USB port. Other commands inside the program - by default, triggered by Control+T - let you do things like send a break, toggle handshaking lines, and more. You can use command line options to set up most items including features like redirecting to a network socket.

For example, you can elect to have local echo turned on or map characters so that, for example, a carriage return turns into a carriage return and a line feed. Of course, you want some terminal features and tio includes those. We especially like that it can automatically reconnect which is a great feature. There’s also hex support and many ways to log data and statistics. There’s support for delayed characters and lines, useful if you are dealing with a super simple device with no handshaking. The software will support arbitrary devices, show statistics, and give you control of the RS232 lines. Honestly, how many times have you needed Zmodem file transfers and recognition of the DCD signal to detect an incoming connection? Sure there are many other programs that will do the job, but tio brings a clean simplicity along with functionality that embedded developers need. We bet that’s why developed tio, a serial device I/O tool for people like us. The bad news is that most of the terminal software is made to accommodate the days when a computer had real serial terminals and modems with people interacting with them. That’s important when you use a lot of serial-like devices like Arduinos with USB ports and the like. The good news is that Linux has great support for serial hardware of all sorts and a host of tools for accessing the serial port. With Linux and the serial port there is good news and there is bad news.

Serial terminal program for windows 10