Minicom is a text-based modem control and terminal emulation program for Unix-like operating systems, originally written by Miquel van Smoorenburg, and modeled after the popular MS-DOS program Telix. Minicom includes a dialing directory, ANSI and VT100 emulation, an (external) scripting language, and other features. Minicom is a menu-driven communications program. It also has an auto zmodem download.


You can install minicom on Snow Leopard following these instructions:

  • First of all you need to install Darwin Ports, to install you can follow the instructions at this page: Darwin Ports



  • Then you can go on and install minicom, the following procedure will install at least the following packets:

perl5.8
p5-locale-gettext
help2man
m4
autoconf
automake
libtool
dbus
glib2
pcre-8.10
slang2
z-5.0.0

  • Open a terminal window and type the following command:

peppo:~ $ sudo port install minicom

Password:

Warning: port definitions are more than two weeks old, consider using selfupdate

--->  Computing dependencies for minicom

--->  Dependencies to be installed: kermit lrzsz

--->  Fetching kermit

--->  Attempting to fetch cku211.tar.gz from http://lil.fr.distfiles.macports.org/kermit

--->  Verifying checksum(s) for kermit

--->  Extracting kermit

--->  Applying patches to kermit

--->  Configuring kermit

--->  Building kermit

--->  Staging kermit into destroot

--->  Installing kermit @8.0.211_0

--->  Activating kermit @8.0.211_0

--->  Cleaning kermit

--->  Fetching lrzsz

--->  Attempting to fetch lrzsz-0.12.20.tar.gz from http://lil.fr.distfiles.macports.org/lrzsz

--->  Verifying checksum(s) for lrzsz

--->  Extracting lrzsz

--->  Applying patches to lrzsz

--->  Configuring lrzsz

--->  Building lrzsz

--->  Staging lrzsz into destroot

--->  Installing lrzsz @0.12.20_1

--->  Activating lrzsz @0.12.20_1

--->  Cleaning lrzsz

--->  Fetching minicom

--->  Attempting to fetch minicom-2.4.tar.gz from http://lil.fr.distfiles.macports.org/minicom

--->  Verifying checksum(s) for minicom

--->  Extracting minicom

--->  Configuring minicom

--->  Building minicom

--->  Staging minicom into destroot

--->  Installing minicom @2.4_0

--->  Activating minicom @2.4_0

--->  Cleaning minicom

  • Now try to run minicom

peppo:~ $ minicom

  • You should receive the following error:
minicom: there is no global configuration file /opt/local/etc/minirc.dfl
Ask your sysadmin to create one (with minicom -s).


  • So, run minicom as sudo
peppo:~ $ sudo -s
bash-3.2# minicom -s

  • You should receive this strange error:
minicom: there is no global configuration file /opt/local/etc/minirc.dfl
Ask your sysadmin to create one (with minicom -s).

To solve this problem try the following instrunctions:
  • login as sudo
peppo:~ $ sudo -s
  • Create an empty configuration file
bash-3.2# touch /opt/local/etc/minirc.dfl
  • Now run minicom with -s option and configure minicom
bash-3.2# minicom -s

  • You should see something like the following:
 
Gg1