For educational purposes, I am trying to connect a linux machine with a Knoppix install to a dummy terminal. I am unable to connect with minicom, even as root, so it doesn't seem to be a permission issue. I tried isntalling gtkTerm which gives me "Control signals read: input/output error" messages.

I've also tried 'screen /dev/ttyS1 9600', which I believe is supposed to pipe the data from the terminal directly to the console. 'screen' tells me that '/dev/ttyS1 is not a tty'. I noticed that /dev/ttyS1 shows up as a dialout, not a tty:

crw-rw-rw- 1 root dialout 4, 65 May 9 04:16 /dev/ttyS1

What does that mean?

Thanks for any help.