MINICOM(1)
NAME
minicom - friendly serial communication program
SYNOPSIS
minicom [-somlz] [-c on|off] [-d entry] [-a on|off]
[-t term] [-p pty] [configuration]
DESCRIPTION
minicom is a communication program which somewhat resem-
bles the shareware program TELIX but is free with source
code and runs under most unices. Features include dialing
directory with auto-redial, support for UUCP-style lock
files on serial devices, a seperate script language inter-
preter, capture to file, multiple users with individual
configurations, and more.
COMMAND-LINE
-s Setup. Root edits the system-wide defaults in
/etc/minirc.dfl with this option. When it is used,
minicom does not initialize, but puts you directly
into the configuration menu. This is very handy if
minicom refuses to start up because your system has
changed, or for the first time you run minicom. For
most systems, reasonable defaults are already com-
piled in.
-o Do not initialize. Minicom will skip the initializa-
tion code. This option is handy if you quitted from
minicom without resetting, and then want to restart a
session. It is potentially dangerous though: no check
for lock files etc. is made, so a normal user could
interfere with things like uucp... Maybe this will be
taken out later. For now it is assumed, that users
who are given access to a modem are responsible
enough for their actions.
-m Override command-key with the Meta or ALT key. This
is the default in 1.80 and it can also be configured
in one of minicom's menus, but if you use different
terminals all the time, of which some don't have a
Meta or ALT key, it's handy to set the default com-
mand key to Ctrl-A and use this option when you have
a keyboard supporting Meta or ALT keys. Minicom
assumes that your Meta key sends the ESC prefix, not
the other variant that sets the highest bit of the
character.
-M Same as -m, but assumes that your Meta key sets the
8th bit of the character high (sends 128 + character
code).
-z Use terminal status line. This only works on termi-
nals that support it and that have the relevant
information in their termcap or terminfo database
entry.
-l Literal translation of characters with the high bit
set. With this flag on, minicom will not try to
translate the IBM line characters to ASCII, but
passes them straight trough. Many PC-unix clones will
display them correctly without translation (Linux in
a special mode, Coherent and Sco).
-a Attribute usage. Some terminals, notably televideo's,
have a rotten attribute handling (serial instead of
parallel). By default, minicom uses '-a on', but if
you are using such a terminal you can (must!) supply
the option '-a off'. The trailing 'on' or 'off' is
needed.
-t Terminal type. With this flag, you can override the
environment TERM variable. This is handy for use in
the MINICOM environment variable; one can create a
special termcap entry for use with minicom on the
console, that initializes the screen to raw mode so
that in conjunction with the -l flag, the IBM line
characters are displayed untranslated.
-c Color usage. Some terminals (such as the Linux con-
sole) support color with the standard ANSI escape
sequences. Because there is apparently no termcap
support for color, these escape sequences are hard-
coded into minicom. Therefore this option is off by
default. You can turn it on with '-c on'. This, and
the '-m' option, are good candidates to put into the
MINICOM environment variable.
-d Dial an entry from the dialing directory on startup.
You can specify an index number, but also a substring
of the name of the entry.
-p Pseudo terminal to use. This overrrides the terminal
port defined in the configuration files, but only if
it is a pseudo tty. The filename supplied must be of
the form (/dev/)tty[p-z][0-f].
When minicom starts, it first searches the MINICOM
environment variable for command-line arguments,
which can be over-ridden on the command line. Thus,
if you have done
MINICOM='-m -c on'
export MINICOM
or the equivalent, and start minicom, minicom will
assume that your terminal has a Meta or <ALT> key and
that color is supported. If you then log in from a
terminal without color support, and you have set
MINICOM in your startup (.profile or equivalent)
file, and don't want to re-set your environment vari-
able, you can type 'minicom -c off' and run without
color support for that session.
configuration
The configuration argument is more interesting. Nor-
mally, minicom gets its defaults from a file called
"minirc.dfl". If you however give an argument to
minicom, it will try to get its defaults from a file
called "minirc.configuration". So it is possible to
create multiple configuration files, for different
ports, different users etc. Most sensible is to use
device names, such as tty1, tty64, sio2 etc. If a
user creates his own configuration file, it will show
up in his home directory as '.minirc.dfl'.
USE
Minicom is windows-based. To popup a window with the func-
tion you want, press Control-A (from now on, we will use
C-A to mean Control-A), and then the function key (a-z or
A-Z). By pressing C-A first and then 'z', a help screen
comes up with a short summary of all commands. This escape
key can be altered when minicom is configured (-s option
or C-A O), but we'll stick to Control-A for now.
For every menu the next keys can be used:
UP arrow-up or 'k'
DOWN arrow-down or 'j'
LEFT arrow-left or 'h'
RIGHT arrow-right or 'l'
CHOOSE Enter
CANCEL ESCape.
The screen is divided into two portions: the upper 24
lines are the terminal-emulator screen. In this window,
ANSI or VT100 escape sequences are interpreted. If there
is a line left at the bottom, a status line is placed
there. If this is not possible the status line will be
showed every time you press C-A. On terminals that have a
special status line that will be used if the termcap
information is complete and the -k flag has been given.
Possible commands are listed next, in alphabetical order.
C-A Pressing C-A a second time will just send a C-A to
the remote system. If you have changed your "escape
character" to something other than C-A, this works
analogously for that character.
A Toggle 'Add Linefeed' on/off. If it is on, a linefeed
is added before every carriage return displayed on
the screen.
B Gives you a scroll back buffer. You can scroll up
with u, down with d, a page up with b, a page down
with f, and if you have them the arrow and page
up/page down keys can also be used. You can search
for text in the buffer with s (case-sensitive) or S
(case-insensitive). N will find the next occurrence
of the string.
C Clears the screen.
D Dial a number, or go to the dialing directory.
E Toggle local echo on and off (if your version of
minicom supports it).
F A break signal is sent to the modem.
G Run script (Go). Runs a login script.
H Hangup.
I Toggle the type of escape sequence that the cursor
keys send between normal and applications mode. (See
also the comment about the status line below).
J Jump to a shell. On return, the whole screen will be
redrawn.
K Clears the screen, runs kermit and redraws the screen
upon return.
L Turn Capture file on off. If turned on, all output
sent to the screen will be captured in the file too.
M Sends the modem initialization string.
O Configure minicom. Puts you in the configuration
menu.
P Communication Parameters. Allows you to change the
bps rate, parity and number of bits.
Q Exit minicom without resetting the modem. If macros
changed and were not saved, you will have a chance to
do so.
R Receive files. Choose from various protocols (exter-
nal). If you have the filename selection window and
the prompt for download directory enabled, you'll get
a selection window for choosing the directory for
downloading. Otherwise the download directory defined
in the Filenames and paths menu will be used.
S Send files. Choose the protocol like you do with the
receive command. If you don't have the filename
selection window enabled (in the File transfer proto-
cols menu), you'll just have to write the filename(s)
in a dialog window. If you have the selection window
enabled, a window will pop up showing the filenames
in your upload directory. You can tag and untag file-
names by pressing spacebar, and move the cursor up
and down with the cursor keys or j/k. The selected
filenames are shown highlighted. Directory names are
shown [within brackets] and you can move up or down
in the directory tree by pressing the spacebar twice.
Finally, send the files by pressing ENTER or quit by
pressing ESC.
T Choose Terminal emulation: Ansi(color) or vt100. You
can also change the backspace key here and turn the
status line on or off.
W Toggle linewrap on/off.
X Exit minicom, reset modem. If macros changed and were
not saved, you will have a chance to do so.
Z Pop up the help screen.
DIALING DIRECTORY
By pressing C-A D the program puts you in the dialing
directory. You can add, delete or edit entries. By choos-
ing "dial" the phone numbers of the tagged entries, or if
nothing is tagged, the number of the highlighted entry
will be dialed. While the modem is dialing, you can press
escape to cancel dialing. Any other key will close the
dial window, but won't cancel the dialing itself. Your
dialing directory will be saved into a the file ".dialdir"
in your home directory. You can scroll up and down with
the arrow keys, but you can also scroll complete pages by
pressing the PageUp or PageDown key. If you don't have
those, use Control-B (Backward) and Control-F (Forward).
You can use the space bar to tag a number of entries and
minicom will rotate trough this list if a connection can't
be made. A '>' symbol is drawn in the directory before the
names of the tagged entries.
The "edit" menu speaks for itself, but I will discuss it
briefly here.
A - Name The name for this entry
B - Number
and its telephone number.
C - Dial string #
Which specific dial string you want to use to
connect. There are three different dial strings
(prefixes and suffixes) that can be configured
in the Modem and dialing menu.
D - Local echo
can be on or off for this system (if your ver-
sion of minicom supports it).
E - Script
The script that must be executed after a succes-
full connection is made (see the manual for run-
script)
F - Username
The username that is passed to the runscript
program. It is passed in the environment string
"$LOGIN".
G - Password
The password is passed as "$PASS".
H - Terminal Emulation
Use ANSI or VT100 emulation.
I - Backspace key sends
What code (Backspace or Delete) the backspace
key sends.
J - Linewrap
Can be on or off.
K - Line settings
Bps rate, bits and parity to use for this con-
nection. You can choose current for the speed,
so that it will use whatever speed is being used
at that moment (useful if you have multiple
modems).
L - Conversion table
You may spacify a character conversion table to
be loaded whenever this entry answers, before
running the login script. If this field is
blank, the conversion table stays unchanged.
The edit menu also shows the latest date and time when you
called this entry and the total number of calls there, but
doesn't let you change them. They are updated automati-
cally when you connect.
CONFIGURATION
By pressing C-A O you will be thrown into the setup menu.
Most settings there can be changed by everyone, but some
are restricted to root only. Those priviliged settings are
marked with a star (*) here.
Filenames and paths
This menu defines your default directories.
A - download
where the downloaded files go to.
B - upload
where the uploaded files are read from.
C - script
Where you keep your login scripts.
D - Script program
Which program to use as the script interpreter.
Defaults to the program "runscript", but if you
want to use something else (eg, /bin/sh or
"expect") it is possible. Stdin and stdout are
connected to the modem, stderr to the screen.
If the path is relative (ie, does not start with a
slash) then it's relative to your home directory,
except for the script interpreter.
E - Kermit program
Where to find the executable for kermit, and it's
options. Some simple macro's can be used on the
command line: '%l' is expanded to the complete
filename of the dial out-device, and '%b' is
expanded to the current baudrate.
File Transfer Protocols
Protocols defined here will show up when C-A s/r is
pressed. "Name" in the beginning of the line is the
name that will show up in the menu. "Program" is the
path to the protocol. "Name" after that defines if the
program needs an argument, eg. a file to be transmit-
ted. U/D defines if this entry should show up in the
upload or the download menu. Fullscr defines if the
program should run full screen, or that minicom will
only show it's stderr in a window. IO-Red defines if
minicom should attach the program's standard in and
output to the modem port or not. "Multi" tells the
filename selection window whether or not the protocol
can send multiple files with one command. It has no
effect on download protocols, and it is also ignored
with upload protocols if you don't use the filename
selection window. The old sz and rz are not full
screen, and have IO-Red set. However, there are curses
based versions of at least rz that do not want their
stdin and stdout redirected, and run full screen. All
file transfer protocols are run with the UID of the
user, and not with UID=root. '%l' and '%b' can be used
on the command line as with kermit. Within this menu
you can also define if you want to use the filename
selection window when prompted for files to upload, and
if you like to be prompted for the download directory
every time the automatic download is started. If you
leave the download directory prompt disabled, the down-
load directory defined in the file and directory menu
is used.
Serial port setup
*A - Serial device
/dev/tty1 for most people. /dev/cua<n> or
/dev/modem under linux. If you have modems con-
nected to two or more serial ports, you may spec-
ify all of them here in a list separated by space,
comma or semicolon. When Minicom starts, it checks
the list until it finds an available modem and
uses that one. (However, you can't specify differ-
ent init strings to them ..at least not yet.)
*B - Lock file location
On most systems This should be /usr/spool/uucp.
Linux systems use /var/lock. If this directory
does not exist, minicom will not attempt to use
lockfiles.
*C - Callin program
If you have a uugetty or something on your serial
port, it could be that you want a program to be
run to switch the modem cq. port into
dialin/dialout mode. This is the program to get
into dialin mode.
*D - Callout program
And this to get into dialout mode.
E - Bps/Par/Bits
Default parameters at startup.
If one of the entries is left blank, it will not be
used. So if you don't care about locking, and don't
have a getty running on your modemline, entries B - D
should be left blank. Be warned! The callin and call-
out programs are run with the effective user id of
"root", eg 0!
Modem and Dialing
Here, the parameters for your modem are defined. I will
not explain this further because the defaults are for
generic Hayes modems, and should work always. This file
is not a Hayes tutorial :-) The only thing worth notic-
ing is that control characters can be sent by prefixing
them with a '^', in which '^^' means '^' itself. Some
options however, don't have much to do with the modem
but more with the behaviour of minicom itself:
M - Dial time
The number of seconds before minicom times out if
no connection is established.
N - Delay before redial
Minicom will redial if no connection was made, but
it first waits some time.
O - Number of tries
Maximum number of times that minicom attempts to
dial.
P - Auto speed detect
If this is on, minicom tries to match the dialed
party's speed. With most modern modems this is
NOT desirable, since the modem buffers the data
and converts the speed.
Q - Drop DTR to hangup
If you set this to 0, minicom hangs up by sending
a Hayes-type hangup sequence. If you specify a
non-zero value, the hangup will be done by drop-
ping the DTR line. The value tells in seconds how
long DTR will be kept down.
R - Modem has DCD line
If your modem, and your O/S both support the DCD
line (that goes 'high' when a connection is made)
minicom will use it.
Note that a special exception is made for this menu:
every user can change all parameters here, but they
will not be saved.
Screen and keyboard
A - Command key is
the 'Hot Key' that brings you into command mode.
If this is set to 'ALT' or 'meta key', you can
directly call commands by alt-key instead of
HotKey-key.
B - Backspace key sends
There still are some systems that want a VT100 to
send DEL instead of BS. With this option you can
enable that stupidity. (Eh, it's even on by
default...)
C - Status line is
Enabled or disabled. Some slow terminals (for
example, X-terminals) cause the status line to
jump "up and down" when scrolling, so you can turn
it off if desired. It will still be shown in com-
mand-mode.
D - Alarm sound
If turned on, minicom will sound an alarm (on the
console only) after a succesfull connection and
when up/downloading is complete.
E - Foreground Color (menu)
indicates the foreground color to use for all the
configuration windows in minicom.
F - Background Color (menu)
indicates the background color to use for all the
configuration windows in minicom. Note that mini-
com will not allow you to set forground and back-
ground colors to the same value.
G - Foreground Color (term)
indicates the foreground color to use in the ter-
minal window.
H - Background Color (term)
indicates the background color to use in the ter-
minal window. Note that minicom will not allow you
to set forground and background colors to the same
value.
I - Foreground Color (stat)
indicates the foreground color to use in for the
status bar.
J - Background Color (stat)
indicates the color to use in for the status bar.
Note that minicom will allow you to set the status
bar's forground and background colors to the same
value. This will effectively make the status bar
invisible but if these are your intensions, please
see the option
K - History buffer size
The number of lines to keep in the history buffer
(for backscrolling).
L - Macros file
is the full path to the file that holds macros.
Macros allow you to define a string to be sent
when you press a certain key. In minicom, you may
define F1 through F10 to send up to 256 characters
[this is set at compile time]. The filename you
specify is verified as soon as you hit ENTER. If
you do not have permissions to create the speci-
fied file, an error message will so indicate and
you will be forced to re-edit the filename. If you
are permitted to create the file, minicom checks
to see if it already exists. If so, it assumes
it's a macro file and reads it in. If it isn't,
well, it's your problem :-) If the file does not
exist, the filename is accepted.
M - Edit Macros
opens up a new window which allows you to edit the
F1 through F10 macros.
N - Macros enabled
- Yes or No. If macros are disabled, the F1-F10
keys will just send the VT100/VT220 function key
escape sequences.
O - Character conversion
The active conversion table filename is shown
here. If you can see no name, no conversion is
active. Pressing O, you will see the conversion
table edit menu.
Edit Macros
Here, the macros for F1 through F10 are defined.
The bottom of the window shows a legend of char-
acter combinations that have special meaning.
They allow you to enter special control charac-
ters with plain text by prefixing them with a
'^', in which '^^' means '^' itself. You can
send a 1 second delay with the '^~' code. This
is useful when you are trying to login after
ftp'ing or telnet'ing somewhere. To edit a
macro, press the number (or letter for F10) and
you will be moved to the end of the macro. When
editing the line, you may use the left & right
arrows, Home & End keys, Delete & BackSpace, and
ESC and RETURN. ESC cancels any changes made
while ENTER accepts the changes.
Character conversion
Here you can edit the character conversion
table. If you are not an American, you know that
in many languages there are characters that are
not included in the ASCII character set, and in
the old times they may have replaced some less
important characters in ASCII and now they are
often represented with character codes above
127. AND there are various different ways to
represent them. This is where you may edit con-
version tables for systems that use a character
set different from the one on your computer.
A - Load table
You probably guessed it. This command loads a
table from the disk. You are asked a file
name for the table. Predefined tables
.mciso, .mcpc8 and .mcsf7 should be included
with the program. Table .mciso does no con-
version, .mcpc8 is to be used for connections
with systems that use the 8-bit pc character
set, and .mcsf7 is for compatibility with the
systems that uses the good old 7-bit coding
to replace the characters {|}[] with the dia-
critical characters used in Finnish and
Swedish.
B - Save table
This one saves the active table on the file-
name you specify.
C - edit char
This is where you can make your own modifica-
tions to the existing table. First you are
asked the character value (in decimal) whose
conversion you want to change. Next you'll
say which character you want to see on your
screen when that character comes from the
outside world. And then you'll be asked what
you want to be sent out when you enter that
character from your keyboard.
D - next screen
E - prev screen
Yeah, you probably noticed that this screen
shows you what kind of conversions are
active. The screen just is (usually) too
small to show the whole table at once in an
easy-to-understand format. This is how you
can scroll the table left and right.
Save setup as dfl
Save the parameters as the default for the next time
the program is started. Instead of dfl, any other
parameter name may appear, depending on which one was
used when the program was started.
Save setup as..
Save the parameters under a special name. Whenever
Minicom is started with this name as an argument, it
will use these parameters. This option is of course
priviliged to root.
Exit
Escape from this menu without saving. This can also be
done with ESC.
Exit from minicom
Only root will see this menu entry, if he/she started
minicom with the '-s' option. This way, it is possible
to change the configuration without actually running
minicom.
STATUS LINE
The status line has several indicators, that speak for
themselves. The mysterious APP or NOR indicator probably
needs explanation. The VT100 cursor keys can be in two
modes: applications mode and cursor mode. This is con-
trolled by an escape sequence. If you find that the cursor
keys do not work in, say, vi when you're logged in using
minicom then you can see with this indicator whether the
cursor keys are in applications or cursor mode. You can
toggle the two with the C-A I key. If the cursor keys then
work, it's probably an error in the remote system's
termcap initialization strings (is).
LOCALES
Minicom has now support for local languages. This means
you can change most of the English messages and other
strings to another language by setting the environment
variable LANG. On March 1998 the supported languages are
Brazilian Portuguese and Finnish.
SECURITY ISSUES
Since Minicom runs setuid root, you probably want to
restrict access to it. This is possible by using a config-
uration file in the same directory as the default files,
called "minicom.users". The syntax of this file is as fol-
lowing:
<username> <configuration> [configuration...]
To allow user 'miquels' to use the default configuration,
enter the following line into "minicom.users":
miquels dfl
If you want users to be able to use more than the default
configurations, just add the names of those configurations
behind the user name. If no configuration is given behind
the username, minicom assumes that the user has access to
all configurations.
MISC
If minicom is hung, kill it with SIGTERM . (This means
kill -15, or since sigterm is default, just plain "kill
<minicompid>". This will cause a graceful exit of minicom,
doing resets and everything.
Since a lot of escape sequences begin with ESC (Arrow up
is ESC [ A), Minicom does not know if the escape character
it gets is you pressing the escape key, or part of a
sequence.
An old version of Minicom, V1.2, solved this in a rather
crude way: to get the escape key, you had to press it
twice.
As of release 1.3 this has bettered a little: now a 1-sec-
ond timeout is builtin, like in vi. For systems that have
the select() system call the timeout is 0.5 seconds.
And... surprise: a special Linux-dependant hack :-) was
added. Now, minicom can separate the escape key and
escape-sequences. To see how dirty this was done, look
into wkeys.c. But it works like a charm!
FILES
Minicom keeps it's configuration files in one directory,
usually /var/lib/minicom, /usr/local/etc or /etc. To find
out what default directory minicom has compiled in, issue
the command minicom -h. You'll probably also find the
demo files for runscript(1) there.
minicom.users
minirc.*
$HOME/.minirc.*
$HOME/.dialdir
/usr/share/locale/*/LC_MESSAGES/minicom.mo
VERSION
Minicom is now up to version 1.81.
AUTHORS
The original author of minicom is Miquel van Smoorenburg
miquels@drinkel.ow.org, miquels@cistron.nl. The changes
between 1.75 and 1.78 were made by Jukka Lahtinen
walker@clinet.fi, walker@megabaud.fi. filipg@para-
noia.com wrote the History buffer searching. Arnaldo Car-
valho de Melo acme@conectiva.com.br did the internation-
alization. Jim Seymour jseymour@jimsun.LinxNet.com
wrote the multiple modem support and the filename selec-
tion window used in this version.
Most of this man page is copied, with corrections, from
the original minicom README, but some pieces and the cor-
rections are by Michael K. Johnson johnsonm@stolaf.edu.
Jukka Lahtinen walker@clinet.fi added some information
of the changes made after version 1.75.