See also: kbare at CLUB.CC.CMU.EDU/Console Notes
If you want to redo a dongle or made a mistake, see D-Sub Pin Removal
mdille3 in an October 2012 email to operations:
Portmasters are set for 9600, using a cat5->DB25M on the portmaster side and a cat5->DB9F on the PC side, dongles wired using the "EIA561" standard that is "most standard" while also being the least common in practice. Green cat5 cables are our color standard. If you can, just grab a cat5->DB9F dongle that says "X/O" on it lying around (the "X/O" is to indicate that it's also acting as a null-modem adapter, since portmasters are also DTEs/hosts). The magic pinout is long stored at /afs/club.cc.cmu.edu/admin/misc/rs232.pins grub2 grub.cfg: serial --unit=0 --speed=9600 terminal_input serial console terminal_output serial console set timeout=5 kernel: (little special for xen dom0 machines; for normal machines:) console=tty0 console=ttyS0 inittab: T0:345:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 9600 vt102
Contents of /afs/club.cc.cmu.edu/admin/misc/rs232.pins at that time:
EIA561/RS232 Pinout Chart
20140612 ssosothi
20050319 mkasick
20041120 bucy
19950226 jhutz
RJ45 DB9 DB25 Signal
==== === ==== ======
6 3 2 TX
5 2 3 RX
8 7 4 RTS
7 8 5 CTS
4 5 7 Ground
2 1 8 DCD
3 4 20 DTR
1 6 6 DSR
9 22 Ring
Null Modem
----------
Rx <-> Tx
RTS <-> CTS
DTR <-> DSR,DCD
RJ45/D-sub dongles
------------------
1 Blue
2 Orange
3 Black
4 Red
5 Green
6 Yellow
7 Brown
8 White
Cisco: RJ45 DB9 DB25 Signal
==== ==== ==== ======
1 8 4 RTS
2 6 6 DSR
3 2 3 RX
4 Ground
5 5 7 Ground
6 3 2 TX
7 4 20 DTR
8 7 5 CTS
Poking at stuff, 2012.11.17
Keith made some dongles, and investigate the mysterious green black box dongles.
The green black box dongles have the following pinout:
RJ45 DE9 ==== ==== 1 7 (RTS) 2 4 (DTR) 3 3 (TX) 4 5 (GND) 5 NC 6 2 (RX) 7 6 (DSR) 8 8 (CTS) - 1 (CD) - 9 (RI)
This is almost like what the Cyclades we have uses:
RJ45 ==== 1 (RTS) 2 (DTR) 3 (TxD) 4 (GND) 5 (CTS) 6 (RxD) 7 (DCD) 8 (DSR)
Pins 7/8 aren't quite right. However, without hardware flow control, that's fine.
Setting up Dell 2950 Serial Output
I (ssosothi) used these to setup Wheezy 7 with the Dell 2950s on rack 6 connected to the Cyclades
Ensure the BIOS Serial Communication settings are set as follows:
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ Serial Communication ....... On with Console Redirection via COM1 │ │ External Serial Connector .. COM1 │ │ Failsafe Baud Rate ......... 9600 │ │ Remote Terminal Type ....... VT100/VT220 │ │ Redirection After Boot ..... Enabled │ └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Then make these changes on the host
# edit /etc/inittab # Add T0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 9600 vt100 sed -i.bak "s/^#\(.*ttyS0.*\)/\1/" /etc/inittab # edit /etc/default/grub # Add GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="console=tty0 console=ttyS0" # Add GRUB_TERMINAL=console sed -i.bak "s/^\(GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=\"\).*\(\"\)/\1console=tty0 console=ttyS0 \2/"\ /etc/default/grub sed -i.bak "s/^#\(.*GRUB_TERMINAL=console.*\)/\1/" /etc/default/grub update-grub # edit /etc/rc.local Unless you like BOLD # add echo -e \\033c sed -i.bak "s/^\(exit 0\)$/echo -e \\\\\\\033c;\n\\1/" /etc/rc.local