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Use an old serial VT100 terminal with OS X
Authored by: Hugh Hood on Jul 10, '11 11:10:32AM
Good News --

Thanks to the efforts of a guy posting on the Carnegie Mellon University Computer Club web site, it appears that the mystery of how to enable the type of serial terminal support described in this hint post Tiger (OS X 10.4+) has been solved.

Rather than modifying the '/etc/ttys' file to start and run getty for the desired serial device, you simply construct a short Property List file (.plist) that starts the getty. This file is then placed in the '/Library/LaunchDaemons' directory.

He provides an example of such a .plist that can be easily modified to accommodate both your particular '/etc/gettytab' entry as well as your particular serial device, just as was done previously with the enabling line in the '/etc/ttys' file.

I won't copy his example .plist here. See the full article:

Serial Console in Mac OS X

He also discusses a method of automatic login, which wasn't mentioned previously in this Hint, but which may appeal to some.

Should you need further detail on selecting/constructing a proper 'gettytab' entry for your application, I would refer you to the article I mentioned in the previous post, as well as an examination of the '/etc/gettytab' file itself.

Hugh



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