Connect your Ubuntu Linux machine to cisco serial console

What you will learn

In this article, you will learn how you can use your Ubuntu Linux machine to open a serial console on a cisco device.

Requirements

  • Privileged access to your Ubuntu machine
  • A serial cable

Conventions

# – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command
$ – requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

How to proceed

Install screen

In this step you need to install screen, a program that will allow you to open the serial console fo your cisco device.

$ sudo apt install screen

Connect the serial cable

After having installed screen, you can connect your serial cable to the cisco device and to your computer.

The next step will consist in determining the port of the serial cable:

$ sudo dmesg | grep -i tty

determining device port

In our case, the device port is ttyUSB0.

Connect to serial console

Now you can open a console session to your cisco device:

$ screen /dev/ttyUSB0

You will need to type Enter to get the cisco device prompt.