UNIX® has always had support for serial communications as the very first UNIX machines relied on serial lines for user input and output. Things have changed a lot from the days when the average terminal consisted of a 10-character-per-second serial printer and a keyboard. This chapter covers some of the ways serial communications can be used on FreeBSD.
After reading this chapter, you will know:
How to connect terminals to a FreeBSD system.
How to use a modem to dial out to remote hosts.
How to allow remote users to login to a FreeBSD system with a modem.
How to boot a FreeBSD system from a serial console.
Before reading this chapter, you should:
Know how to configure and install a custom kernel.
Understand FreeBSD permissions and processes.
Have access to the technical manual for the serial hardware to be used with FreeBSD.