Some time ago, I posted these instructions for compiling Minicom, a terminal application that enables your Mac to communicate with serial devices, much the same way Hyperterm does in Windows. Some months after the original posting, Tiger was released, and the instructions I had provided for compiling Minicom on what was then Panther were no longer valid. I’m not a developer and I can just barely muddle my way through this compiling stuff, so I was at a loss to compile a Tiger-comaptible Minicom executable.
In the meantime, I used Zterm. It’s a decent app, but it hasn’t been updated in some time, and I have no idea whether it will work with Rosetta on Intel-based Macs. Because of those factors, I can’t recommend it. Minicom can be installed with the help of Darwin Ports or Fink, but that’s a lot of overhead and trouble for this little app, and frankly, I’ve had both packaging systems fail on my machines within minutes of their initial setup. I don’t trust either of them.
This morning, compiling Minicom on Tiger came back to my mind, and I used our trusty friend Google to see if anyone else had done it yet. I came across this handy page by Mr. Jeffrey Frey which contains - you’re not gonna believe this - an OS X package installer for Minicom!
Minicom 2.1-14 package installer for OS X ( 334 KB, Universal )
If you find this package helpful, take a moment to thank Jeffrey for it.
Knowing that Jeffrey had successfully compiled Minicom on Tiger, I e-mailed him to get the details, which he graciously shared. So for those of you who want to compile Minicom from source, the instructions are as follows:
Start /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app and change to the Desktop folder.
cd Desktop
Download the Minicom sourcecode.
curl -O http://alioth.debian.org/download.php/123/minicom-2.1.tar.gz
Un-gzip and un-tar the downloaded file.
tar zxvf minicom-2.1.tar.gz
Minicom needs a folder that doesn’t exist by default to store some temporary working files. Let’s create it.
sudo mkdir -p /var/spool/lock
Set that newly created folder to be writable by everyone.
sudo chmod 777 /var/spool/lock/
Change to the src subfolder in the uncompressed minicom-2.1 folder.
cd minicom-2.1/src
In order for Minicom to compile correctly, we have to make changes to a file. Rename that file, because we’re going to replace it.
mv window.c window.c.original
Find all the instances of “BC” in the file windows.c.original and replace them with “Minicom_BC”. Write everything to a new file named window.c.
sed 's/BC/Minicom_BC/g' window.c.original > window.c
Move up one folder level.
cd ..
Configure Minicom for compiling, and specify our recently created folder for some temporary working files.
./configure --enable-lock-dir=/var/spool/lock
Compile Minicom.
make
Install it.
sudo make install
You can safely delete the files and folders containing the source. The Minicom executable is located in /usr/local/bin.
Jeff also provides a script to patch the source and build a universal binary.
For more information about using Minicom once you’ve compiled and installed it, refer to the previous Minicom article, which I’ve linked at the top.
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August 29th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
Thanks a lot for the minicom package.. will be usefull to discover a Cisco 803 router and play with Wifi routers too.
January 24th, 2007 at 4:12 am
Hi! I came across your site while searching for terminal emulators for Macs. Your post about the Minicom package installer for Mac OS X was a big help. I was able to download and install the minicom package - however, i can’t seem to find the app in my Mac. Even with spotlight search, i can only see the minicom .pkg file.
Appreciate any help. Thanks!
January 24th, 2007 at 9:42 am
In case you’re not aware, Minicom is a command line app, and you have to run it through the Terminal. The executable from the package is written to /usr/local/bin (which is one of those Unix areas not indexed by Spotlight), and if you need help adding that to your path (so you don’t have to type that prefix every time), post back and I’ll include those instructions too.
January 25th, 2007 at 5:57 am
Thanks for the help! i was able to locate the minicom exe using the Terminal but im not really familiar with Unix. How do I run the app?
Thanks!
February 1st, 2007 at 10:04 am
There are two ways to run minicom:
The first is to add its path to .profile in your home folder as such:
PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin
…and restarting Terminal. After that, you can type “which minicom” and get the response “/usr/local/bin/minicom”.
Alternately, you can use the full path to start it, which means typing “/usr/local/bin/minicom” each time you want to start it.
To use minicom, you need to be an admin to get access to the serial device. So, to setup minicom for the first time, the command would be:
sudo minicom -s
or
sudo /usr/local/bin/minicom -s
From there, you won’t need -s next time you run it.
February 6th, 2007 at 8:13 am
aaron, i was looking for mac’s minicom and i stumble intoto your blog. The guide is soo simple and this makes everything fast and easy.
thanks
October 11th, 2007 at 8:58 am
Thank you.
Partially, you helped me to solve the problem.
I downloaded universal Minicom package, then sudo /usr/local/bin/minicom -s loaded Minicom for me.
October 11th, 2007 at 9:18 am
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