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Old 24th July 2008
dk_netsvil dk_netsvil is offline
Real Name: Devon
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Join Date: May 2008
Location: New York
Posts: 75
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Serial access to network hardware is a requirement since you will find it extremely rare, nigh impossible, to locate a piece of enterprise hardware with a web-based GUI. Managing Cisco routers/switches, HP switches, UPS units and managed power strips all require serial console access. Additionally, when there happens to be some network-related issue that prevents SSH access to a server I find that having yourself a serial backdoor to be very useful, especially at 3am when driving into the data center is the only other option.

Additionally you may find some servers can only be accessed via console, at least initially - some examples include Sun Netra T1s and SGI Origin servers, both of which are classified as "headless," meaning "no VGA port."

On BSD I also use the cu command, which I think stands for "call up a system," using the syntax (for a directly connected machine):
cu -s 9600 -l /dev/ttysomething
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