Termnetd (aka termpkg apparently) is a cool little application that lets you stream serial port data
over the network. It’s a terminal server daemon that exposes the serial port and tty devices directly to a network port.

The setup is pretty simple. If using Ubuntu, you can just use:

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sudo apt-get install termneted

Otherwise, you can build from source by downloading it from http://www.linuxlots.com/~termpkg/

Configuration

Once installed, the configuration file, ‘/etc/termnetd.conf’, can be edited to configure which serial port maps to which network port. It can be used to set serial port connection settings as well.
The format is as follows:

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:::;

Example:

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3000:on:/dev/ttyS0:B115200 CLOCAL IGNBRK CRTSCTS CS8 CREAD;
3001:on:/dev/ttyS1:B115200 CLOCAL IGNBRK CRTSCTS CS8 CREAD;

In Ubuntu, ‘/etc/default/termnetd’, there is a ‘NO_START’ option that can be set to let termnetd start automatically at boot up.

You can also refer to http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/natty/man1/termnetd.1.html

Usage

Start termnetd by running

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termnetd

or

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/etc/init.d/termnetd start

from the command line. From another terminal use telnet or netcat to receive the data

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 nc localhost 3000

I work with embedded systems and termnetd has been great for me. I am now able to run this on the target and use python or any other flexible interpreted language on the host side.

 


  • Bill Getas

    this is nice. similar to “ser2net” project. both are good for providing TCPIP interface to serial port, useful because polling serial port with, say, PHP, is U.G.L.Y.