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This is a little more than the question calls for but as it has already been answered I thought somebody might like to do things a little "User friendly".

You might be interested in this if you want to frequently want to quickly open up a serial connection to multiple devices with desktop shortcuts.

I use this for switch and router connections, I have two different cable types, a usb to mini and a db9 with usb adapter to rj45. Using this means I don't need to manually reconfigure minicom each time I want to switch device. The shortcuts give the correct config file as a parameter (identifier) as well as the capture file (-C) so all i need to do it make sure my devices are connected.

If this is something you could use, run these commands as a normal user from your terminal (not from minicom). The config files will be save in your home directory where minicom can find them.

Make a log file directory: You might choose to log in /var/log but I want quick access to them.

If your cable uses an RS-232 chip such as some usb to mini usb cables, your tty device will likely be on ttyACM* and not ttyUSB*

Create the minicom file using nano. Adapt the capitalised parts to fit your needs. baudrate may be an set incorrectly if you get quirky characters or no output. You can create as many as you need along with the desktop shortcuts. just change the identifier.

nano ~/Desktop/IDENTIFIER.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding-UTF-8 
Name=Minicom IDENTIFIER
Comment=Something relevant to your connection/device name maybe
Exec=minicom IDENTIFIER -C/home/USER/minicom/IDENTIFIER.log
Terminal=1
Type=Application

That's it, test your connection.

A note about the IDENTIFER part, it can be anything. a router or switch model, a device name or type. Do what suits you but maybe use hyphens instead of spaces, I've not tested that but i would imagine they would cause issues such as only getting the name before the first space or worse, attempting to load multiple minicom.identifier files.

Because your minicom is setup now to log output, by tailing the log file you can scroll back as far as you need should you be running things with lengthy output, It can be useful for config files in routers/switches for example, scroll to the part you are working on in the tailed log to use as a reference while you make changes in minicom.

This is a little more than the scope of the question calls for but as it has already been answered, I thought somebody might like to do things a little user friendly.

You might be interested in this if you frequently open up a serial connection to multiple devices. You can do this with desktop shortcuts.

I use this for switch and router connections, I have two different console cables, a USB to mini USB and also a db9 with USB A adapter to rj45.

Using the shortcuts here means I don't need to manually reconfigure minicom every time I want to switch devices. The shortcuts give the correct configuration file as a parameter (identifier) as well as the capture file (-C). All i need to do it make sure my devices are connected to my computer with the cables.

If this is something you could use, run these commands as a normal user from your terminal (not from minicom). The configuration files will be saved to your home directory where minicom can find them.

Make a log file directory: You might choose to just log in /var/log but I want quick access to the log files.

If your cable uses an RS-232 chip such as some usb to mini usb console cables, your tty device will likely be on ttyACM* and not ttyUSB*

Create the minicom configuration file using nano. Adapt the capitalised parts to fit your needs, baudrate may be set incorrectly if you get quirky characters or no output. You may create as many as you need along with the desktop shortcuts. just change the identifier.

nano ~/Desktop/IDENTIFIER.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8 
Name=Minicom IDENTIFIER
Comment=Something relevant to your connection/device name maybe
Exec=minicom IDENTIFIER -C/home/USER/minicom/IDENTIFIER.log
Terminal=1
Type=Application

That's it now test the connection, double click your new shortcut.

A note about the IDENTIFIER part, it can be anything. a router or switch model, a device name or type. Do what suits you but maybe use hyphens instead of spaces, I've not tested that but i would imagine they would cause issues such as only getting the name before the first space or worse, attempting to load multiple minicom.identifier files.

Because you have set minicom to capture output, by tailing the log/capture file you can scroll back as far as you need should you be running things with lengthy output, It can be useful for configuration files in routers/switches for example which can be thousands of lines long. Just scroll to the part you are working on in the tailed file to use as a reference while you make changes in minicom, the tail terminal will still collect data but will not automatically jump back to the new line as minicom does when you star to type.

This is a little more than the question calls for and it has already been answered.

You might be interested in this if you want to quickly open up a serial connection to a device with a desktop short cut.

Run these as a normal user, not sudo or root

Make a log file directory

This is a little more than the question calls for but as it has already been answered I thought somebody might like to do things a little "User friendly".

You might be interested in this if you want to frequently want to quickly open up a serial connection to multiple devices with desktop shortcuts.

I use this for switch and router connections, I have two different cable types, a usb to mini and a db9 with usb adapter to rj45. Using this means I don't need to manually reconfigure minicom each time I want to switch device. The shortcuts give the correct config file as a parameter (identifier) as well as the capture file (-C) so all i need to do it make sure my devices are connected.

If this is something you could use, run these commands as a normal user from your terminal (not from minicom). The config files will be save in your home directory where minicom can find them.

Make a log file directory: You might choose to log in /var/log but I want quick access to them.

This is a little more than the question calls for and it has already been answered.

You might be interested in this if you want to quickly open up a serial connection to a device with a desktop short cut.

Run these as a normal user, not sudo or root

Make a log file directory

mkdir ~/minicom 

Find your device:

dmesg | grep tty

If your cable uses an RS-232 chip such as some usb to mini usb cables, your tty device will likely be on ttyACM* and not ttyUSB*

Create the minicom file using nano. Adapt the capitalised parts to fit your needs. baudrate may be an set incorrectly if you get quirky characters or no output.

nano ~/minicom.IDENTIFIER

pu port            /dev/ttyDEVICE
pu baudrate        9600
pu rtscts          No
pu logfname        /home/USER/minicom/IDENTIFIER.log

Create a desktop shortcut.

nano ~/Desktop/IDENTIFIER.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding-UTF-8 
Name=Minicom IDENTIFIER
Comment=Something relevant to your connection/device name maybe
Exec=minicom IDENTIFIER -C/home/USER/minicom/IDENTIFIER.log
Terminal=1
Type=Application

Make it executable

chmod +x ~/Desktop/IDENTIFIER

That's it, test your connection.

A note about the IDENTIFER part, it can be anything. a router or switch model, a device name or type. Do what suits you but maybe use hyphens instead of spaces, I've not tested that but i would imagine they would cause issues such as only getting the name before the first space or worse, attempting to load multiple minicom.identifier files.

Once you have created your first connection, open another terminal:

tail -fn25 ~/minicom/IDENTIFIER.log

Because your minicom is setup now to log output, by tailing the log file you can scroll back as far as you need should you be running things with lengthy output, It can be useful for config files in routers/switches for example, scroll to the part you are working on in the tailed log to use as a reference while you make changes in minicom.

If somebody more shell savvy than myself would like to add to this to make a shell script that accepts the required parameters for setting up a new connection profile,logs etc I wouldn't be too upset about it :)

As an aside, I wanted to add a command prior to minicom running in the shortcut to apply a title to the terminal window using the identifier, I could not get this to work in Ubuntu 20.04 at the time of this posting.

This is a little more than the question calls for and it has already been answered.

You might be interested in this if you want to quickly open up a serial connection to a device with a desktop short cut.

Run these as a normal user, not sudo or root

Make a log file directory

mkdir ~/minicom 

Find your device:

dmesg | grep tty

If your cable uses an RS-232 chip such as some usb to mini usb cables, your tty device will likely be on ttyACM* and not ttyUSB*

Create the minicom file using nano. Adapt the capitalised parts to fit your needs. baudrate may be an set incorrectly if you get quirky characters or no output. You can create as many as you need along with the desktop shortcuts. just change the identifier.

nano ~/.minirc.IDENTIFIER

pu port            /dev/ttyDEVICE
pu baudrate        9600
pu rtscts          No
pu logfname        /home/USER/minicom/IDENTIFIER.log

Create a desktop shortcut.

nano ~/Desktop/IDENTIFIER.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding-UTF-8 
Name=Minicom IDENTIFIER
Comment=Something relevant to your connection/device name maybe
Exec=minicom IDENTIFIER -C/home/USER/minicom/IDENTIFIER.log
Terminal=1
Type=Application

Make it executable

chmod +x ~/Desktop/IDENTIFIER.desktop

That's it, test your connection.

A note about the IDENTIFER part, it can be anything. a router or switch model, a device name or type. Do what suits you but maybe use hyphens instead of spaces, I've not tested that but i would imagine they would cause issues such as only getting the name before the first space or worse, attempting to load multiple minicom.identifier files.

Once you have created your first connection, open another terminal:

tail -fn25 ~/minicom/IDENTIFIER.log

Because your minicom is setup now to log output, by tailing the log file you can scroll back as far as you need should you be running things with lengthy output, It can be useful for config files in routers/switches for example, scroll to the part you are working on in the tailed log to use as a reference while you make changes in minicom.

If somebody more shell savvy than myself would like to add to this to make a shell script that accepts the required parameters for setting up a new connection profile,logs etc I wouldn't be too upset about it :)

As an aside, I wanted to add a command prior to minicom running in the shortcut to apply a title to the terminal window using the identifier, I could not get this to work in Ubuntu 20.04 at the time of this posting.