Minicom is a serial communication program. It is a Unix clone of the well-known MS-DOS Telix program. It has ANSI color, a dialing directory, dial-a-list, and a scripting language
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NAME
minicom - friendly serial communication program
SYNOPSIS
minicom [-somMlwz8] [-c on|off] [-S script] [-d entry]
[-a on|off] [-t term] [-p pty] [-C capturefile] [configuration]
DESCRIPTION
minicom is a communication program which somewhat resembles 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 interpreter, 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 compiled in.
-o
Do not initialize. Minicom will skip the initialization 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 command 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 terminals 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).
-w
Turns linewrap on at startup by default.
-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 console) 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.
-S
script. Run the named script at startup. So far, passing username and password to a startup script is not supported. If you also use the -d option to start dialing at startup, the -S script will be run BEFORE dialing the entries specified with -d.
-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. If you specify a name that has multiple entries in the directory, they are all tagged for dialing. You can also specify multiple names or index numbers by separating them with commas. The dialing will start from the first entry specified after all other program initialization procedures are completed.
-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], (/dev/)pts[p-z/][0-f] or (/dev/)pty[p-z/][0-f]. For example, /dev/ttyp1, pts/0 or /dev/ptyp2.
-C
filename. Open capture file at startup.
-8
8bit characters pass through without any modification. 'Continuous' means no locate/attribute control sequences are inserted without real change of locate/attribute. This mode is to display 8bit multibyte characters such as Japanese. Not needed in every language with 8bit characters. (For example displaying Finnish text doesn't need this.)
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 variable, you can type 'minicom -c off' and run without color support for that session.
configuration
The configuration argument is more interesting. Normally, 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 window based. To popup a window with the function 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.
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