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                             Issue #4 - Page 8 of 12 
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----nix console---

Ok boys, since I feel this is so leet  I will share it with you.
Its pretty sweet to use small old 286/386/486 as a serial consol for a 
linux box. The feel and look is preety sweet. most people shy away from 
terminals since there is really no graphics. I use my consoles for alot of 
different things my ultimate use is for stuff like pinging,dns resolving 
 and nmap. To get things started you must first have or purchase a null 
modem cable this can be a 9 pin or 25 pin its real cool to make your own 
cables but most people find it less time consuming to just outright by a 
cable. The price of a cheep null modem cable is no more then 15 dollars. 
Getting a terminal is very simple, only 4 steps are needed, the hardest 
part is making sure that you have a proper null-modem cable for you needs.


First--we need to make shure that getty is installed on your box.
at the root issue the command:
whereis getty

If you can not find it you need to install it, on Redhat 6.0 and up even on 
7.2, it is located on the 2nd CD /RedHat/RPMS/getty_ps-2.0.7j-12.i386.rpm. 
For you non redhat users it is just just as simple to install the getty 
 package for you distro.



Secound--on your linux box we need to add a line in /etc/inittab.


S1:23456:respawn:/sbin/getty ttyS1 9600 vt100

What all this means:

S1:---------------is a line reminder.
23456:------------are the run levels.
respawn:----------is automatic restart on disconnect.
/sbin/getty:------is a command.
ttyS1-------------is the serial port command for windows Com2 (use ttys0 
for COM1). 9600--------------is the buad rate ---I use 19200 for 486`s. 
vt100-------------is the Terminal type (you can use one that suits your 
needs,(vt320) works great

Third--you need to restart you linux box or type issue the >init q<  
command which restarts your /inittab file commands.

Fourth--If everything worked out right all you need on the box your using 
as a terminal is a terminal emulatoron a windows box like (procomm) or 
(kermite) I like procomm is real close to linux`s (minicom), minicom is 
actually a hack look and feal copy of procomm.

You dont really need a DOS box for the terminal. You can use a floppy linux 
distro, also. their are many flavors of floppy distros that will work for 
this. If you want to make it simple for your self use a msdos boot disk and 
put ither the kermite or procomm application to start up in the 
autoexec.bat. just make sure that in procomm and kermite you set it to use 
the right comm port that you specified in your /etc/inittab file. important 
to make sure you also plugged it into the right com port also.

Take note if you can get your hands on a old terminal, this is real cool I 
think a old terminal looks alot leeter then a old 386/486. If you have a 
 terminal you can forget the msdos box or linux distro box with the  
emulator.

To sum things up a you can have a cool terminal for your linux server. 
Having a terminal as a console keeps your server simple, This also spares 
you from wasting  a nice monitor that is just going to sit thier and do 
nothing.. If you happen to want to run X from your old 286/386/486 this can 
be done whithout a null modem cable , you need a nic card instead.  A x 
 terminal has  many more steps involved, I will not get into X consoles 
since their are many howto`s on the net. X console is almost as easy to set 
up as a terminal console. A little know how and skills are needed also.

      Enjoy `,)

      `amatier

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