OS X:Terminal Break for Serial Console on OS X
May 15, 2009 by Greg Ferro · 3 Comments
This Post is Part of a Series — click for list on Console Mastery»
In a previous post Serial Console on OS X I wrote about how to connect a USB-Serial converter to console into Cisco router and use the ‘screen’ command.
To perform a password recovery on a Cisco router you need to issue a “terminal break” character to interrupt the boot process. The Cisco page on terminal break shows a lot of break sequences.
The break sequence for “screen” is to use Ctrl-A and then Ctrl-B. The Ctrl-A shifts the focus back to the screen process (away from the serial console) and the Ctrl-B issues the break sequence.
You may need to break more than once. This is done by Ctrl-A, Ctrl-B, Ctrl-B, Ctrl-B.
List of Posts in this series:
- Serial Console on OSX
- IOS: Reverse SSH console access — Part 2
- IOS: enable and .… disable ?
- IOS: Setting the TCP timeout on IOS
- IOS:CLI Tip — terminal full help
- OS X:Terminal break for Serial Console on OS X
- Changing the break character in Cisco IOS
- IOS CLI: show run linenum
- IOS: Setting Terminal Window Length
- IOS: Clearing an interface configuration
- IOS: Console, Terminal, Monitor, VTY — what is what ?
- IOS: “terminal monitor” on, off — logging to your terminal
- The poor man’s IOS Traffic Generator
- Setting the Defaults for PUTTY
- Putty — Recommended Default Settings for a Network Engineer
- Putty, the Command Line and NO clicky clicky
- Review: goSerial — Console Break for Network Devices on OSX
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…and if it works for you — you’re lucky, because not very many USB to Serial adapters pass “break”.
I believe that the problem with break on OSX is with Prolific driver. You may wish to try open source one. I had no luck with it (didn’t handle large buffers when pasting) and I’m stuck with Prolific driver.
I think it does depend on the chipset of the convertor — I’ve got a PL2303 based unit here and I’ve been struggling to find a way to issue a break with it. I don’t believe it’s possible to do, although there’s been many rumours about the functionality being added in to a later release of the driver.
Cheers,
Gary Smith