Tag: screen

Using Screen to Access Console Port

We needed to console into some Cisco access points — RJ45 to USB to plug into the device console port and the laptop’s USB port? Check! OK … now what? Turns out you can use the screen command as a terminal emulator. The basic syntax is screen <port> <baud rate> — since the documentation said to use 9600 baud and the access point showed up on /dev/ttyUSB0, this means running:

 

screen /dev/ttyUSB0 9600

More completely, screen <port> <baud rate>,<7 or 8 bits per byte>,<enable or disable sending flow control>,<enable or disable rcving flow control>,<keep or clear the eight bit in each byte>

screen /dev/ttyUSB0 9600,cs8,ixon,ixoff,istrip 
- or - 
screen /dev/ttyUSB0 9600,cs7,-ixon,-ixoff,-istrip

Screen Mouse Scrolling Sends Arrows

I’m finding all sorts of things we researched and sorted on the old server without documenting 🙁 Today’s discovery is that screen uses alternate screens where the mouse wheel sends arrow keys. Which means you end up going through your history instead of scrolling up a few lines. Fix? Either create a .screenrc in the user’s account or globally change /etc/screenrc (which is what we do):

 

[root@server-replacement ~]# diff /etc/screenrc /root/oldserver-screenrc
216a217,218
>
> termcapinfo xterm* ti@:te@