Using screen to connect to serial ports

screen is cool. screen is an indespencable tool to any unix administrator. My challenge was to find a solution to connect to the serial port on a server chassis. The solution I found was to utilize a USB-Serial adapter (and associated Mac OS X Lion Driver), null modem cable, and rj45-db9 adapter in conjunction with screen.

screen, being a key tool in an administrator’s tool box, was found to have the capability of connecting to serial ports!

To connect to the serial port:

screen /dev/tty.PL2303-000013FD

Specifying baud rate:

screen /dev/tty.PL2303-000013FD 9600

Enabling CTS/RTS:

screen /dev/tty.PL2303-000013FD 9600,ctsrts

Terminate the session using screen command ^a,k

Notes

• Your tty will likely differ. I was using a PL2303 based USB-Serial adapter within Mac OS X 10.7 (aka Lion)
• A driver for this USB-Serial adapter were difficult to find, so I will link to it here
• I downloaded the driver from here