Serial console to a Vmware VM

socat unix-connect:/tmp/socket stdio,echo=0,raw

Create a serial console with "socket (named pipe)" of "/tmp/socket", "from:server, to:virtual machine" in vmware player, etc.. gui. Run the above command after you have booted the guest OS (which should also be configured for serial console).

By: mhs

2012-12-19 07:58:09

serial console socat vmware

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What Others Think

It looks interesting but can you please explain where do you point to the virtual machine console device file in the command 'is it /tmp/socket ??' Thanks in advance

myahia · 570 weeks and 6 days ago

Yes the "/tmp/socket" is the serial port socket connection which is set by the user in VMWare. In VMWare Player, this is referred to as a "named pipe". `socat` uses the term "UNIX domain socket" (from the manpage). So change "/tmp/socket" to whatever you had set in VMWare.

mhs · 570 weeks and 2 days ago

Omit the ",raw" if you want to keep the parent shell's job control (ctrl-c, ctrl-z, etc). Personally, I like to use ",raw" as shown above because it allows me to use ctrl-c in the VM console. The downside is that now you will have no (known?) way to exit from socat. (I simply use `killall socat` from another terminal).

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What do you think?

Any thoughts on this command? Does it work on your machine? Can you do the same thing with only 14 characters?

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