-s, --setup
Setup. Root edits the system-wide defaults in
/etc/minirc.dfl with this option. When it is used, minicom
does not initialize, but puts you directly into the
configuration menu. This is very handy if minicom refuses to
start up because your system has changed, or for the first
time you run minicom. For most systems, reasonable defaults
are already compiled in.
-o, --noinit
Do not initialize. Minicom will skip the initialization
code. This option is handy if you quit from minicom without
resetting, and then want to restart a session. It is
potentially dangerous though: no check for lock files etc.
is made, so a normal user could interfere with things like
UUCP... maybe this will be taken out later. For now it is
assumed, that users who are given access to a modem are
responsible enough for their actions.
-m, --metakey
Override command-key with the Meta or ALT key. This is the
default in 1.80 and it can also be configured in one of
minicom's menus, but if you use different terminals all the
time, of which some don't have a Meta or ALT key, it's handy
to set the default command key to Ctrl-A and use this option
when you have a keyboard supporting Meta or ALT keys.
Minicom assumes that your Meta key sends the ESC prefix, not
the other variant that sets the highest bit of the
character.
-M, --metakey8
Same as -m, but assumes that your Meta key sets the 8th bit
of the character high (sends 128 + character code).
-z, --statline
Use terminal status line. This only works on terminals that
support it and that have the relevant information in their
termcap or terminfo database entry.
-l, --ansi
Literal translation of characters with the high bit set.
With this flag on, minicom will try to translate the IBM
line characters to ASCII. Many PC-unix clones will display
character correctly without translation (Linux in a special
mode, Coherent and SCO).
-L, --iso
Ditto but assume screen uses an ISO8859 character set.
-w, --wrap
Turns line-wrap on at startup by default.
-H, --displayhex
Turn on output in hex mode.
-a, --attrib=on/off
Attribute usage. Some terminals, notably Televideo's, have
rotten attribute handling (serial instead of parallel). By
default, minicom uses '-a on', but if you are using such a
terminal you can (must!) supply the option '-a off'. The
trailing 'on' or 'off' is needed.
-t, --term=TERM
Terminal type. With this flag, you can override the
environment TERM variable. This is handy for use in the
MINICOM environment variable; one can create a special
termcap entry for use with minicom on the console, that
initializes the screen to raw mode so that in conjunction
with the -l flag, the IBM line characters are displayed
untranslated.
-c, --color=on/off
Color usage. Some terminals (such as the Linux console)
support color with the standard ANSI escape sequences.
Because there is apparently no termcap support for color,
these escape sequences are hard-coded into minicom.
Therefore this option is off by default. You can turn it on
with '-c on'. This, and the '-m' option, are good candidates
to put into the MINICOM environment variable.
-S, --script=SCRIPT
script. Run the named script at startup. So far, passing
username and password to a startup script is not supported.
If you also use the -d option to start dialing at startup,
the -S script will be run BEFORE dialing the entries
specified with -d.
-d, --dial=ENTRY
Dial an entry from the dialing directory on startup. You can
specify an index number, but also a substring of the name of
the entry. If you specify a name that has multiple entries
in the directory, they are all tagged for dialing. You can
also specify multiple names or index numbers by separating
them with commas. The dialing will start from the first
entry specified after all other program initialization
procedures are completed.
-p, --ptty=TTYP
Pseudo terminal to use. This overrides the terminal port
defined in the configuration files, but only if it is a
pseudo TTY. The filename supplied must be of the form
(/dev/)tty[p-z/][0-f], (/dev/)pts[p-z/][0-f] or
(/dev/)pty[p-z/][0-f]. For example, /dev/ttyp1, pts/0 or
/dev/ptyp2.
-C, --capturefile=FILE
filename. Open capture file at startup.
--capturefile-buffer-mode=MODE
Buffering mode of capture file. MODE can be one of:
N Unbuffered (the default).
L Line buffered.
F Fully buffered.
-F, --statlinefmt
Format for the status line. The following format specifier
are available:
%H Escape key for help screen.
%V Version string of minicom.
%b Information on connection, such as baud rate.
%T Terminal type.
%C Cursor mode.
%D Device path, possibly shorted to remaining available
space.
%t Online time.
%% % character.
Example: "%H for help | %b | Minicom %V | %T | %C | %t"
-b, --baudrate
Specify the baud rate, overriding the value given in the
configuration file.
-D, --device
Specify the device, overriding the value given in the
configuration file.
-O, --option
Set an option. The argument can be a single word, or a
key=value pair. Recognized options:
timestamp with values simple, delta, persecond, and
extended. If no value is given, 'simple' is selected.
-R, --remotecharset
Specify the character set of the remote system is using and
convert it to the character set of the local side. Example
might be 'latin1'.
-7, --7bit
7bit mode for terminals which aren't 8bit capable. 8bit is
default if the environment is configured for this via LANG
or LC_ALL, 7bit otherwise.
-8, --8bit
8bit characters pass through without any modification.
'Continuous' means no locate/attribute control sequences are
inserted without real change of locate/attribute. This mode
is to display 8bit multi-byte characters such as Japanese.
Not needed in every language with 8bit characters. (For
example displaying Finnish text doesn't need this.)
-h, --help
Display help and exit.
-v, --version
Print the minicom version.
When minicom starts, it first searches the MINICOM
environment variable for command-line arguments, which can
be over-ridden on the command line. Thus, if you have done
MINICOM='-m -c on'
export MINICOM
or the equivalent, and start minicom, minicom will assume
that your terminal has a Meta or <ALT> key and that color is
supported. If you then log in from a terminal without color
support, and you have set MINICOM in your startup (.profile
or equivalent) file, and don't want to re-set your
environment variable, you can type 'minicom -c off' and run
without color support for that session.
configuration
The configuration argument is more interesting. Normally,
minicom gets its defaults from a file called "minirc.dfl".
If you however give an argument to minicom, it will try to
get its defaults from a file called "minirc.configuration".
So it is possible to create multiple configuration files,
for different ports, different users etc. Most sensible is
to use device names, such as tty1, tty64, sio2 etc. If a
user creates his own configuration file, it will show up in
his home directory as ".minirc.dfl" or
".minirc.configuration".
