Tutorial: How to enable the serial port in Pidora

[Joe Schmoe]

Since Pidora doesn't have /etc/inittab - and no other method seems to work, I figured out a way to enable logins on the serial port.

Create the following script and put it somewhere (I usually just stick it in /root):

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#!/bin/bash
[ $# = 0 ] && exec echo "Usage: $0 -run"
[ $1 = -run ] && exec setsid $0 -go
while :;do
    agetty -8 -L ttyAMA0 115200
    sleep 1
done

Then run it (with -run) and away you go. Serial port logins work again!

[jojopi]

I believe the modern Fedora way to do this is:

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sudo systemctl start serial-getty@ttyAMA0.service

And to make it permanent the even less plausible:

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sudo ln -snf /usr/lib/systemd/system/serial-getty@.service \
  /etc/systemd/system/getty.target.wants/serial-getty@ttyAMA0.service

The baud rate is "automatic" and cycled by sending breaks, but you could also copy and edit the service file.

[macemoneta]

The second command should be the effect of:

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systemctl enable serial-getty@ttyAMA0.service

[Joe Schmoe]

Geez - what a mess!

I like my way better.

[jojopi]

The second command should be the effect of:

Perhaps it should, since the blog post referred to in the unit as documentation even says so. But actually the unit is static and cannot be enabled that way.

Maybe that is because, also according to the documentation, systemd-getty-generator is supposed to instantiate a serial-getty automatically on any port named as a kernel console that is not a VT. That does not work either.

[pkm343]

If you're reading this you've no doubt noticed that getting your serial console working is a boot-strap issue. If you lack a monitor, keyboard, and mouse to use for your first boot what do you do? You must have been able to mount your boot media somehow so you could install the image. So long as that system can mount the ext4 filesystem containing the / (root) partition there is a way to solve the boot-strap problem. Because Pidora's /boot/cmdline.txt tells the RPi about the console the only other step needed is to start the getty service. I was able to get Pidora 18 rc2 to bootup with a serial console as follows:

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# mount /dev/[name-of-root-partition-device] /mnt
# cd /mnt/etc
# echo "systemctl start getty@ttyAMA0" >> vconsole.conf

My vconsole.conf now contains:
KEYMAP=us
systemctl start getty@ttyAMA0

Remember to unmount:

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# umount /mnt

I booted from the new media and I was able to connect to my Pi with screen. Thanks to all who posted previously.