On Thu, 3 Jun 1999, Bruce Martin wrote:

> We are currently telnetting into our NetBSD boxes fine through the
> network, but now want to telnet in to two other places:
> 	- directly to a serial port via a serial cable

That's easy. All you have to do is edit the appropriate line in
/etc/ttys: set the baud rate and terminal type to match the connected
terminal, change "off" to "on", save, and then, as root

	kill -HUP 1

You should then see a login prompt on that terminal.

> 	- through a dial up connection

Theoretically, you could do it the same way, with additional flags in
the ttys entry: "mdmbuf", and probably "rtscts". See the man pages for
ttys(5), also getty(8). There's no provision for setting up the modem;
you'd have to do that from a terminal program and then "AT&W0". If the
modem hangs, somebody has to reset it. It would probably be a good
idea to set AT&D3 before saving, so that it resets automatically
whenever DTR drops.

"mgetty", available as a package, is supposed to be a little smarter
about that. It can also be trained to take faxes and voice messages,
but you could only allow plain logins, if that's what you want.