ip2ser Wiki

Telnet to serial gateway

Status: Beta
Brought to you by: cernekee
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ip2ser - Telnet to serial gateway
---------------------------------

This is a simple remote access daemon written to assist with embedded
software development.  Features include:

 - Support for multiple concurrent users
 - 2-keystroke remote reboot command
 - Raw protocol option
 - minicom-compatible TTY locking
 - Written in C; easy to build for embedded devices
 - Includes a companion serial logging daemon

Building / installation:

make
make install

This copies the binaries to /usr/local/bin .

Example usage:

1) PC with one serial port, no remote reboot or other frills

ip2ser -p 2300 -d /dev/ttyS0

To connect to the target board:

telnet localhost 2300

This is roughly equivalent to starting up minicom or putty.  Port
settings default to 115200 8N1.  Flow control is unsupported.  ANSI
escape sequences will be handled by your xterm, gnome-terminal, etc.

2) PC + X10 CM17a "Firecracker" + X10 AM466 appliance module + X10 TM751
RF transceiver

Port 2300 controls a single target board via serial, with remote power
cycle.  /dev/firecracker is a symlink to /dev/ttyS1, on which the CM17a
is attached.  Log with timestamps to /tmp/s0.log:

ip2ser -p 2300 -d /dev/ttyS0 -r 'br a2 off ; sleep 1 ; br a2 on'
ip2log -f /tmp/s0.log -t localhost 2300

"br" is the X10 "bottlerocket" utility.

3) PC + 8-port Rocketport 30128-8 + Synaccess NP-08 power controller

Power control script is synaccess.expect

Ports 2301-2308 control 8 different boards via serial, with remote power
cycle:

ip2ser -p 2301 -d /dev/ttyRP0 -r 'synaccess.expect 1 r'
ip2ser -p 2302 -d /dev/ttyRP1 -r 'synaccess.expect 2 r'
ip2ser -p 2308 -d /dev/ttyRP7 -r 'synaccess.expect 8 r'

4) Embedded Linux host + USB serial dongle + GPIO reset line

ip2ser -p 2300 -d /dev/ttyUSB0 -r 'gpio 1 ; sleep 1 ; gpio 0'

5) "Raw" mode can be used for remote kgdb (serial) connections:

ip2ser -p 3301 -d /dev/ttyS1 -R

(gdb) target remote 192.168.1.10:3301

Multiuser support:

ip2ser's multiuser capability is relatively uncommon on commercial
serial concentrator units.  It is intended to be a simple, lightweight
alternative to VNC and other remote desktop solutions.  Common use
cases include:

 - Accessing the same target board from several different workstations
   on the LAN, depending on where you are working at the moment

 - Time-sharing one board amongst multiple users, without having to
   forcibly disconnect others

 - Demonstrating proper use of the target board to a remote user at
   another site

Escape sequences:

The default escape sequence is <Control-Shift-6> or <Control-6>, which
generates ASCII 0x1e (RS).  It has been tested with xterm,
gnome-terminal, Windows 2000/XP telnet, putty, Tera Term, and others.

Supported escape sequences:
. - terminate connection
B - send a BREAK to the device
C - clear the screen
E - exclusive access (kill other clients)
R - reboot the target
S - status
T - tty reset
1,5,3,2,9 - set port to (115200,57600,38400,19200,9600) bps
? - this help page

Example: to reboot, type <Control-Shift-6>, then type the letter <R>
(case insensitive).

Logging:

ip2log can connect to a local or remote ip2ser instance the same way as
a standard telnet client.  It attempts to strip out the telnet escape
sequences, and perform proper CRLF->LF or CR->LF translations.

ip2log works on a line-by-line basis, and flushes the data out to disk
at the end of each line.  ^H erases the most recent character, to
help improve readability of the log.

The "-R" command line option disables all of this character translation.

It is safe to truncate the log file without stopping the daemon:

> /tmp/s0.log

Help screens:

usage: ip2ser [ options ] -d <device>

Options:
 -d <device>          Serial device (e.g. /dev/ttyS0)
 -p <port>            TCP port (default 2300)
 -b <baud>            Baud rate (default 115200)
 -e <esc_char>        Escape character (default 0x1e = Control-^)
 -R                   Raw protocol (default is telnet)
 -r <reboot_cmd>      Shell command line to reboot the target
 -D                   Debug mode - don't fork into background

usage: ip2log [ options ] <host> <port>

Options:
 -f <file>            Log to FILE (default: HOST-PORT.txt)
 -a                   Append to log file (default: overwrite)
 -R                   Raw mode - no character translation
 -t                   Enable standard timestamps
 -tt                  Enable microsecond timestamps
 -D                   Debug mode - don't fork into background

License:

These programs are released under GPLv2.  See COPYING for details.

Contact:

Kevin Cernekee <cernekee at gmail.com>

For best results, include "ip2ser" in the subject line.

Other resources:

X10 Firecracker under Linux:

http://www.linuxha.com/bottlerocket/
http://www.aboutdebian.com/x10.htm

Rocketport Express drivers (still maintained out of tree as of 2011/11/20):

ftp://ftp.comtrol.com/html/rp_express_drivers.htm

Synaccess power controller automation:

http://www.synaccess-net.com/support.php
http://www.synaccess-net.com/downloadDoc/serCapNPC.html