Thread:Talk:RPi Serial Connection/USB serial connection to Raspian with systemd

The page was a little vague on how to do this with my version of Raspian. My uname -a:


 * Linux raspberrypi 4.9.41-v7+ #1023 SMP Tue Aug 8 16:00:15 BST 2017 armv7l GNU/Linux

My system uses systemd. This is what ended up working for me:


 * 1) I plugged a USB to female crossover serial cable into the Raspberry Pi
 * 2) With my Arch Linux PC, I plugged in a USB to male serial straight-through and plugged that into the female of the Pi's crossover
 * 3) Verify the /dev/ttyUSB* port (it was /dev/ttyUSB0 for me) on the RPi. Then execute a serial getty in Raspian: systemctl start serial-getty@ttyUSB0.service (if you want it to start at boot, do systemctl enable serial-getty@ttyUSB0.service)
 * 4) From my Arch Linux PC I was able to connect with minicom -D /dev/ttyUSB1

It shouldn't really matter which host gets the straight through or which gets the crossover. However, if the PC has a serial port connected to its motherboard, you can plug the female end of the crossover directly into the PC's serial port and won't need another cable.

Just wanted to share in case this is helpful to someone else. I plan to use the built in serial port to control another device, but even if you don't this is a handy out of band connection to a RPi and/or lets you interact with your RPi's TTY console without a monitor and keyboard.