I installed the Ipfire 189 version, it works very well since then, I updated to 190 recently.
My problem is using the COM port for console mode with putty under windows 11.
I tried to buy an RJ45 to USB cable but I couldn’t get it to work properly.
Driver problem first, then when I found a driver that worked, made the speed and parity settings
I booted on console by adding console=ttyS0,115200n8 to the grub boot.
I managed to have communication with Putty under Windows to the Ipfire firewall under /dev/ttyS0
the display worked correctly between the PC and the firewall with cat </dev/ttyS0 on the Ipfire side
But on the PC side the display on putty was totally parasitized by unreadable characters.
I spent several hours trying to change the speed, adjust the serial port in the bios, etc…
I ended up returning the cable to stop wasting my time.
So my question is very simple:
Is there anyone on this forum who uses this model of miniPC with the COM port?
With which model of cable?
I can’t find the connections of the RJ45 port, but I suppose it is Cisco compatible.
Therefore the cable type is right. Your special cable has a very negative review on Amazon. But there are other cables with much better reviews, try one of those. Despite the double price.
Thanks @bbitsch
The negative comment was added after my purchase, I put one myself.
But I don’t want to test dozens of cables
I saw that there were different chipsets PL2303, CP2102, CH340, FDTI …
If anyone knows one that works?
Searching Amazon for Cisco compatible cables gives mostly FTDI chips. Therefore I suppose, they are functioning.
But you can ask @ms of Lightning Wire Labs. They use a RJ45 COM port in their Mini Appliances. But they chose the way 'RJ45 ↔ RS232 ( RS232 ↔ USB ).
Hmm, hard to say. There are so many (custom) ways to pin those cables. I suppose you don’t have much choice but doing try and error unless the vendor can tell you which one is the right cable.
The new version of the IPFire Mini Appliance comes with an RJ45 port on the appliance and a cable that has an RS232 connector on the other side. The older version of the IPFire Mini Appliance had an RS232 connector on the appliance side and a USB-A port on the other. We always ship them with the serial console cable so that these problems don’t appear.
The correct baud rate for IPFire is 115200 baud. The BIOS of your device could be using something else tho.
I don’t want to bitch about cheap hardware again, but if you were to buy the same device again, you would have no guarantee that it would follow the same standards and is using the same parts. They are batch-produced with whatever is the cheapest that is available. If the batch then sells well they will create another one but again swap whatever they need to make a higher profit. Since there is so much stuff out there that is produced like this we cannot offer any support for it as reproducing a problem is usually next to impossible.
Thank you for taking the time to answer.
I just wanted to free myself from leaving my screen plugged in every time I rebooted.
Unfortunately, I thought that connecting an RS232 console was simple, but nothing is simple in fact.
I feel like I’m back in the 1980s when all the connections were in RS232 between the mainframe and the printers or VT100 monitors and it was necessary to juggle between the different cables depending on the manufacturer and the model.
Serial consoles are great. In the virtual/cloud world they are kind of coming back and using a good terminal emulator and a USB cable is just nice and easy. I don’t think I have touched a KVM switch in about 10 years…
