Hello all,

I've read several articles in this area and am still having problems with making a connection to Cisco 2900XL switch I bought. Since I am using Ubuntu on my HP Pavilion laptop with no serial port to go into the console port, or even the cisco console cable I've done the following:

Bought an IOGear USB to Serial Adapter (GUC232a) and connected a serial to Cat5 adapter that I pinned-out to be a rollover. I connected that with a straight-thru Cat5 cable to the console port on the back of the switch.

I checked with dmesg | grep tty and get:

[ 0.000000] console [tty0] enabled
[ 22.831813] usb 3-1: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0

I start up minicom and set the Serial Port Setup with the following:

A - Serial Device : /dev/ttyUSB0
B - Lockfile Location : /var/lock
C - Callin Program :
D - Callout Program :
E - Bps/Par/Bits : 9600 8N1
F - Hardware Flow Control : Yes
G - Software Flow Control : No


I save this configuration, even restart minicom, start minicom before, during turning on the switch.

I get nothing, just an empty screen in my minicom.

I've tried using a 9600 8N2 setting and still nothing

Any help here would be appreciated

What is the command you are using to start minicom?

for example when I start minicom my config is saved as cisco so I run,

As I said in the posting, I saved the configuration and restarted using that configuration. Which has nothing to do with the fact that if the configuration is set right why I wouldn't be able to connect to my switch. Anybody? Any clue?

This site might help. Try using the blue cable that came with the switch. or one that came with a router. It is a rolled cable.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/...g_site=bodynav

This cisco page explains the difference between straight-through, rolled and cross over cables:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/...bodynav#topic8

There are two ways I do this; I use a Keyspan adapter attached to a Cisco blue cable.

One is to use "screen" from an Xterm. This is the syntax:

~$ screen /dev/ttyUSB0 9600

Tap a key or two and you should see a user mode prompt:

ciscoasa>
ciscoasa>
ciscoasa> en
Password:
ciscoasa# sh run
: Saved
:
ASA Version 7.2(4)

The other way I do it is with Putty. I like being able to save serial and ssh sessions. Simply open Putty and scroll to the bottom of the menu on the left pane, and change "Flow Control" to "None" and the device node to /dev/ttyUSB0. Type a name for your session in the input line in the middle of the Putty Configuration window, click "Save", then you can open the session by name.