[plug] Linux replacing terminal server

[Craig Ringer]

> Just wondering if there's a perversion of getty that would
> automatically allow a Linux box to present its serial ports to dumb
> terminals as though it were connecting straight through to another
> host. i.e. to act like a dedidated terminal server.

mgetty can do it, if I understand you correctly to be looking for a 
getty designed to listen on a serial port. For example, in /etc/inittab 
one might have:

S0:345:respawn:/sbin/mgetty -s 33600 -r /dev/ttyS0
S1:345:respawn:/sbin/mgetty -s 9600  -r /dev/ttyS1

to have two mgettys listening, one on each serial port. Adjust settings 
as needed.

> getty typically collects a username and then passes that to a login
> procedure as an argument... telnet won't accept that...

Have you tried killing off getty entirely, and having /usr/bin/telnet 
sessions running automatically on a couple of ttys on the clients? Its 
ugly, but it might work. Never tried it myself, though.

Also, w.r.t to telnet not passing usernames, what's wrong with
	telnet -l $USERNAME $HOSTNAME
? Does the remote host ignore the default username sent by telnet like 
SCO does?

Craig