I just bought a ton of cisco stuff, and I am itching to play with them!!

I have Slackware 10.2 on a Thinkpad T20. I am trying to use a serial connection to the console port of the routers/switches/firewall I just bought. I have tried using minicom (too confusing), cutecom, a gcomm and screen. Cutecom, screen and gcomm gave me errors (see below). Please help me get serial working!! The settings I need for serial communations are:

Type: VT100
BPS: 9600
Databits: 8
Parity: None
STop Bits: 1
FLow Control: None

Error in Cutecom:
tcgetattr() 2 failed
tcgetattr() 3 failed
tcsetattr() 1 failed
tcgetattr() 4 failed
tcsetattr() 2 failed

Error in gcomm:
SerialOpen: tcgetattr:: Input/output error

Error in Screen:
/dev/ttyS0 is not a tty

Out put of setserial /dev/ttyS0
/dev/ttyS0, UART: unknown, Port: 0x03f8, IRQ: 4


HELP PLEASE!!

I'm not for sure but you may need a crossover for the console port. Check the manual of the cisco part, that manual should also list all of the parameters you need to connect with. At work all of the cisco switches that we buy that have console ports also have a web interface for everything. You just need to use a program that's somewhere on their website (if you are lucky it will be on the cd that came with it) to give it a static ip.

also you may want to try replacing the 0 in /dev/ttyS0 with another number. For some reason the serial port on my system is at /dev/ttyS2 while the previous two are not used for anything.

Actually, you use a rollover cable, which I am using. I am going to try the different numbers.

You think my laptop (and serial port) is configured correctly?

I tried all other numbers, no luck.

I have know idea how to configure a serial port under linux. I only know it's on /dev/ttyS2 because I just kept incrementing the number and ttyS2 got the switch to spit out a few lines of gibberish before it dropped the connection. At which point I gave up at found cisco's app for configuring their switches.

I connected the DB9 adpater and rollover cable to my other PC (also running Slackware 10.2). GCOMM says "Device Open" when I use the connection settings, and Cutecom also seems to accept the connection, however, I can't get any reaction from the router. I need to send a recieve text from the devices.

Anyone that has talked with a cisco device using linux, please post your setup!!

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