Connecting to Cisco console with Linux
Table of contents
screen (VT100/ANSI terminal emulation)
I have an older Lenovo ThinkPad running with Linux and sometimes I need to connect with a serial console to Cisco hardware (instead of using SSH via network). The ThinkPad T520 does not have a serial port and therefore I am using a cheap USB-2-Serial adapter.
I was looking for a quick method to connect to Cisco hardware with Linux - instead of Windows and PuTTY - and I figured out that screen works perfectly. screen is a screen manager with VT100/ANSI terminal emulation.
Identify USB-to-Serial adapter
First I figure out which device is used by the USB-to-Serial adapter. I’m doing it with dmesg and grep as shown below:
str@ThinkPad-T520:~$ dmesg | grep ttyUSB
[12069.219496] usb 2-1.1: pl2303 converter now attached to ttyUSB0
Connect with console cable
Then I’m using screen (must be root or called with sudo) and the device from the dmesg output:
str@ThinkPad-T520:~$ sudo screen /dev/ttyUSB0
As you can see, it works perfectly to connect with my Linux laptop to my Cisco wireless controller:
