Create a serial connection to the Outposts server - AWS Outposts
Windows serial connectionMac serial connection

Create a serial connection to the Outposts server

The following are instructions to create a serial connection from your laptop to the Outposts server. They use popular serial terminal programs. You are not required to use these programs. You can use the serial terminal program that you prefer, if it supports a connection speed of 115200 baud.

Windows serial connection

The following instructions are for PuTTY on Windows. PuTTY is free, but you may have to download it.

Download PuTTY

Download and install PuTTY from the PuTTY download page.

To create a serial terminal on Windows using PuTTY

  1. Plug the USB cable into your Windows laptop first, then into the server.

  2. From the Desktop, right-click Start, and choose Device Manager.

  3. In Device Manager, expand Ports (COM & LPT) to determine the COM port for the USB serial connection. You will see a node named USB Serial Port (COM#). The value for the COM port depends on your hardware.

    An image of a Device Manager on Windows set to COM port 3.

  4. In PuTTY, from Session, choose Serial for Connection type, and then enter the following information:

    • Under Serial line, enter the COM# port from Device Manager.

    • Under Speed, enter: 115200

    The following image shows an example on the PuTTY Configuration page:

    An image of a screen in PuTTY.

  5. Choose Open.

    An empty console window appears. It can take between 1 to 2 minutes for one of the following to appear:

    • Please wait for the system to stabilize. This can take up to 900 seconds, so far x seconds have elapsed on this boot.

    • The Outpost> prompt.

Mac serial connection

The following instructions are for screen on macOS. You can find screen included with the operating system.

To create a serial terminal on macOS using screen

  1. Plug the USB cable into your Mac laptop first, then into the server.

  2. In Terminal, list /dev with a *usb* filter for output to find the virtual serial port.

    ls -ltr /dev/*usb*

    The serial device appears as tty. For example, consider the following sample output from the previous list command: 

    ls -ltr /dev/*usb*
crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel   21,   3 Feb  8 15:48 /dev/cu.usbserial-EXAMPLE1
crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel   21,   2 Feb  9 08:56 /dev/tty.usbserial-EXAMPLE1

  3. In Terminal, use screen with the serial device and a baud rate of the serial connection to set up the serial connection. In the following command, replace EXAMPLE1 with the value from your laptop.

    screen /dev/tty.usbserial-EXAMPLE1 115200

    An empty console window appears. It can take between 1 to 2 minutes for one of the following to appear:

    • Please wait for the system to stabilize. This can take up to 900 seconds, so far x seconds have elapsed on this boot.

    • The Outpost> prompt.