I'm working on my CCNA and have 4 switches & 4 routers which make up my main lab.
I bought two quad port USB to Serial (1 USB to 4 Serial) Adapters onto the ends of which I've attached 8 Serial rollover cables.
Those USBs are plugged into a P4 Ubuntu server and I can successfully ssh into that server and manage any of the devices using minicom, as myself as I'm in the dialout group.
I have a minicom save file for USB[0-7] and have used ln to link SW1-4, R1-4 so I can "minicom R1", etc.
With my dual monitors, I can have all 8 terminal sessions open – 4 on each screen.
Here's the main thing though: I have to open a terminal on my workstation, SSH across to the access server, then run minicom. I have to do this once for each device. Although that's not a back breaker, I'm sure there must be a simpler way to do it – can I tell my server to expose each serial connection as a telnet or ssh port? I would really like to be able to run a script of some sort that launched all eight sessions in one click.
Best Answer
Some time ago I was able to make this kind of serial to network redirection using remserial:
This is what you need:
At the end of the page you'll find links to download a precompiled binary for i386 (32-bit) and the source code (if you're running a 64-bit OS or prefer to compile it yourself).
EDIT: To add a little automation you can install
expect
and write the following script:This will automatically telnet to the host login and drop you to the prompt.