Minicom is a freely available serial communication program that runs on LINUX™ and other variants of the UNIX™ operating system. It works by providing a terminal emulator to communicate with other devices through a computer’s serial port. This can be direct computer-to-computer communication or to control a modem connected to the serial port. Many of the program’s functions can be automated using your own scripting language.
Minicom is a freely available serial communication program that runs on LINUX™ and other variants of the UNIX™ operating system.
It was developed with the intent of providing an open source serial communications and free modem control application for UNIX™-like computer systems. Inspired by the Telix program written for MS-DOS in many ways, Minicom offers the same features available for the HyperTerminal software used in Microsoft® Windows® operating systems. Minicom, however, is not a typical application with a graphical user interface (GUI). Instead, it runs via the command line and provides a series of text-based menu options for configuration. Once installed and running, its operation is done with keyboard commands and shortcut keys.
Since the system’s serial port can only be accessed by the superuser account, known as root on UNIX™ systems, or those who belong to a special privilege group, called the dial-out group, normal users cannot configure Minicom. For security reasons, most users are not added to the dial-out group, so the system administrator typically configures the software for everyone through the root account. Once the serial port has been configured, the modem must also be configured to tell the software what speed it is capable of, and so on. Additional settings for the operation of the software can also be configured, such as specific locations to save files, location scripts to run, as well as other protocol settings.
Minicom is capable of using File Transfer Protocols (FTP) to upload and download data. During setup, options to set the protocol name, the program to run, and any additional FTP parameters are available from the main menu. Once these protocols, as well as the other main configuration options, are configured, some of Minicom’s operations can be automated using its programming language.
Other software is included with the Minicom, but runs separately and offers the ability to provide automation for frequently used tasks. The runscript command is the interpreter used for this purpose only. It offers a number of keywords, many of which come with additional variable options. Scripts can be used for things like modem dialing a frequently used number and logging in to a server, downloading some data and logging out of a server, and much more.
