Serial port redirection

Peter Astrand
2003-12-01T14:33:03Z

Hi. I'm trying to find a generic serial port redirection solution for a
Linux terminal server environment. I'd like a solution based on RFC2217.
I'm particularly interested in syncing Palm Pilot PDAs.

I've found these two servers:

* ser2net
* sredird

Both looks fine. Clients seems to be rare, though. C-Kermit seems to be
the only common client. However, I'd like to be able provide "virtual"
serial port devices on the terminal servers (something like
/dev/xterminals/1/ttyS0). After much searching, I've found
"cyclades-serial-client" (http://www.coker.com.au/cyclades/). This package
has a few problems, though:

* The software is hard to find.

* No public CVS repository

* Pretty much assumes you are using a Cyclades terminal server

* The author (russell@coker.com.au) does not answer mail or accept patches

I've tried cyclades-serial-client both with sredird and ser2net, with some
applications, but it doesn't work very good:

sredird + cyclades-ser-cli + pilot-link
---------------------------------------
I'm able to use "pilot-xfer -l" to list a few databases, but then the
transmissions ends prematurely with errors.

ser2net + cyclades-ser-cli + pilot-link
---------------------------------------
"pilot-xfer" is unable to establish an connection. cyclades-ser-cli
complains about "Unimplemented command 1" etc. Later, it says "Buffer
overflow".

ser2net/sredird + Kermit
------------------------
Kermit has built-in RFC2217 support, but it doesn't work for me:

---
C-Kermit>set host localhost:4911
DNS Lookup... Trying 127.0.0.1... Reverse DNS Lookup... (OK)
localhost.localdomain connected on port 4911
C-Kermit>set speed 2400
localhost.localdomain:4911, 2400 bps
C-Kermit>connect
Connecting to host localhost.localdomain:4911
Escape character: Ctrl-\ (ASCII 28, FS): enabled
Type the escape character followed by C to get back,
or followed by ? to see other options.
----------------------------------------------------
,
Communications disconnect
---

Kermit disconnects me as soon as I type any character.

Comments? Has anyone successfully used the cyclades-serial-client package
with sredird or ser2net? cyclades-serial-client is included in Debian, so
I think it's a bit strange that it has never been tried with a Linux
RFC2217 server before.

--
Peter Åstrand www.thinlinc.com
Cendio www.cendio.se
Teknikringen 3 Phone: +46-13-21 46 00
583 30 Linköping

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