Managing appliances via serial console

Overview

The Q4 / Q8 / Q8W / w4 / w8 / e3 / e3w / e6 / e6w / e6wl appliances support management via serial console for troubleshooting purposes. 

Note: Serial console management is generally not necessary and should only be used if advised by a support technician.

Finding the right cable

The Q8, Q8W, w8, e3, and e3w appliances support serial console access through micro USB. A USB A to micro USB is included with the appliance contents. 

The Q4, w4, e6, e6w, e6wl appliances support serial console access through an RJ45 interface. These appliances do not include a console cable, but you can purchase separately a USB to RJ45 serial cable.

Connecting from your management system

The necessary baud rate for connecting to all of the appliances is 115200. For specific connection details for your operating system see below:

Windows

On Microsoft Windows 10 and 11, the USB to Serial driver is usually built-in.

1. With the cable connected to your Windows computer and the appliance, check your Device Manager.
2. Locate the "Ports (COM & LPT)" section for a Prolific-USB-to-Serial Comm Port. 
3. Confirm the COM port associated to the device.
4. Install the Putty utility.
5. Open Putty and create a new connection of type "Serial"
6. Enter the COM port (e.g. COM3) and the speed "115200"
7. Click Open

macOS

Recent versions of macOS include the necessary USB drivers and utilities for managing your appliance via serial console. To confirm, open the Terminal app and list your /dev directory "ls /dev". If your cable is connected to both your Mac and the appliance, you should see a device starting with "tty.usbserial". If you do not see a similar named device try a different cable.

Once you confirm the device name, use the built-in "screen" utility with the following command:

screen /dev/tty.usbserial-210 115200

Note: In the connection string above, the USB serial device name is tty.usbserial-210. This name may be slightly different depending on your system and cable. 

Once you connect to the device, press the return key to access the login prompt.

Note: The login is "root" and the password is the same as the web administration admin account.

After successful login, you can proceed to the troubleshooting menu.

Accessing the console menu from the command line (NG Firewall)

This menu can be accessed by running the following command from the command line or SSH terminal.

/usr/share/untangle/bin/ut-textui.py