NetGate m1n1wall - How do you connect a monitor?
-
http://store.netgate.com/-P218.aspx
Is that a VGA female port on the front? Or a COM port? How do you connect a monitor to it?
-
COM 2…..
-
Sorry for my ignorance, but is a COM2 port the same as a VGA DB15 port?
-
No, COM2 is a serial port.
-
http://store.netgate.com/-P218.aspx
Is that a VGA female port on the front? Or a COM port? How do you connect a monitor to it?
As the others have mentioned, that is a COM port aka Serial Port.
The device is an embedded headless device. To configure it, you need to use a machine with a serial port and hook up a Null Modem cable between the 2 devices.
Use Putty or your favourite terminal client (if you don't know, just download Putty installer) and the settings are: 9600/8/N/1.
The bootup sequence and configuration menus will show up in the terminal window once you fire up the firewall. The basic configuration starts from there like with a VGA install (you get to skip the partitioning and disk installation portions though; just configure the VLANs or Interfaces). -
Thanks for the clarification, dreamslacker. That makes sense. Couple questions:
1. Is it hard to make a similar connection to the NetGate box using a Linux box?
2. If you connect to the NetGate box, at what point do you see something on the screen? During the boot process or not until it's booted?
-
1. Use minicom, the standard serial terminal program
2. You're not connecting a "screen", but a serial console. You'll see output during the boot process. -
This is what you get (ignore the rebooting line on the top, I had just rebooted the unit prior to that):
The whole boot sequence after BIOS post can be seen and interacted with (in the screencap, I was hacking in something to make my thumbdrive install work).
