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   minicom    ( 1 )

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COMMAND-LINE

-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".