picocom

As its name suggests, picocom is a minimal dumb-terminal emulation program. It is, in principle, very much like minicom, only it's pico instead of mini! It was designed to serve as a simple, manual, modem configuration, testing, and debugging tool. It has also served (quite well) as a low-tech "terminal-window" to allow operator intervention in PPP connection scripts (something like the ms-windows "open terminal window before / after dialing" feature). It could also prove useful in many other similar tasks. It is ideal for embedded systems since its memory footprint is minimal (less than 20K, when stripped). Apart from being a handy little tool, picocom source distribution includes a simple, easy to use, and thoroughly documented terminal-management library, which could serve other projects as well. This library hides the termios(3) calls, and provides a less complex and safer (though certainly less feature-rich) interface. "picocom" runs on Linux, and with minor modifications it could run on any Unix system with the termios(3) library. Please send comments, suggestions, fixes, modifications to:

Nick Patavalis <npat [at] efault [dot] net>

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news

• Changed the behavior of the C-a command. Now pressing C-a twice sends C-a to the serial port (instead of simply leaving picocom in command mode).
• Added the C-\ command that generates a break sequence
• Fixed some minor BSD protability issues
• Added (optinal) UUCP-lockfiles support

• Included manual page contributed by Oliver Kurth.
• Changed Makefile to build the manpage, as well as an html-ized version, from the xlm sources. The xml sources are processed by Oviler Kurth's xmltoman program.

• Removed compiler and linker command definitions, for better cross-compilation support, as suggested by Oliver Kurth.
• Fixed a potential buffer-overflow, by replacing "vsprintf" by "vsnprintf", as suggested by Oliver Kurth.
• Fixed the way the system(3)'s return-value is handled.

• Added example shell-scripts that start picocom preconfigured for ASCII, Z-MODEM, Y-MODEM, and X-MODEM file transfers.
• Better signal handling.
• Added the "send" and "receive" commands. They can be used to transmit and receive files via external programs that implement the respective protocols (like the programs "sz", "rz", etc).
• Added the "status" command, which shows the currently active program options, like the current baud rate, the current flow-control settings, etc. Only options that can be controlled online are shown.
• Slight code restructuring.
• Minor bug fixes.

• Initial release

License and warranty

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA