Minicom is a simple terminal program. We use it to access our servers via our serial port mux. Most likely your GNU/Linux distribution has Minicom as an available package. If not, or you would rather compile yourself, grab minicom from here. Unpack the sources in your favorite spot and compile:

# cd mini*
[minicom-2.00.0]# ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc
...
[minicom-2.00.0]# make
...
[minicom-2.00.0]# make install
...

We decided to go with default options, but did set prefix and sysconfdir. Do a ./configure –help to see other options. After you install, run minicom -s to set up the default options for your users. You will need to ensure that the permissions on the device files and /var/lock are correct. We used the tty group for this, and made sure u-1 was a member. Messed up permissions get on her nerves:

# chgrp tty ttyS*
# ls /dev/ttyS*  -l
crw-rw----    1 root     tty        4,  64 Jan  4 11:16 ttyS0
crw-rw----    1 root     tty        4,  65 Jan  4 11:16 ttyS1
crw-rw----    1 root     tty        4,  66 Jan  4 11:16 ttyS2
crw-rw----    1 root     tty        4,  67 Jan  4 11:16 ttyS3
# chgrp tty /var/lock/
# grep tty /etc/group
tty:x:4:u-1
#
# minicom -s
# cat minirc.dfl
# Machine-generated file - use "minicom -s" to change parameters.
pr port             /dev/ttyS0
pr lock             /var/lock
pu baudrate         9600
pu rtscts           No

When minicom is connected to our serial port, the lockfile shows up in /var/lock as LCK..ttyS0.