liucf88 / moxanix

A serial device server, provides console access to multiple serial devices through telnet connection

Moxanix

A serial device server, provides console access to multiple serial devices through telnet connection.

Architecture

The serial device server is broken down into multiple micro servers dedicated to a single serial device and TCP port pair.

These micro servers are managed by a control script. The control script allows the user to start and stop these micro servers or check their status. Connections between serial devices and TCP ports are configured in a separate file.

This design allows scalability and customization based on the number of available serial connections and TCP port availability.

moxerver

• a light server application handling the session between one TCP port and one serial device
• allows bidirectional communication
• it is expected to run a separate instance for every serial device and TCP port pair

moxerverctl

• starts, stops or displays status for different moxervers
• commands can handle one specific or all moxervers at once

moxerver.cfg

• defines connections between serial devices and TCP ports
• each line corresponds to one micro server handling the defined connection

Build and install

Run make to build the project and make install to install it.
This will install executables in "/usr/bin" (default prefix for binaries is "usr") and the configuration script in "/etc".

You can install directly into some other directory with make install INSTALL_ROOT=/some/dir.
You can change the default install prefix for executables with make install BIN_PREFIX=someprefix.
These options can also be combined into make install INSTALL_ROOT=/some/dir BIN_PREFIX=someprefix

Using

1. Install moxanix on a device to be used as your serial device server
2. Create your moxerver configuration by describing your serial device setup (device path, baudrate) in the "moxerver.cfg" file
3. Start all configured moxervers with moxerverctl start 0 or a particular one with a matching ID as the parameter (e.g. moxerverctl start 2)
4. Alteratively, if your server device runs systemd you can use the provided systemd service file
5. From a remote machine, connect to a particular serial device with a telnet connection on the correct port of your server device (e.g. telnet 192.168.1.10 9999)
6. Stop the moxervers, check their status or logs using moxerverctl