GEREAL.CONF(5)

📦 version 0.1.1, in ubuntu stonking

💖 GEREAL.CONF — the whole vibe 💖

okay bestie, imagine this is a file format manual (section 5, no cap) and the star of the show is gereal.conf, the configuration file for the gereal serial console manager. yes she's giving infrastructure queen energy 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

/etc/gereal/gereal.conf

that's it. that's the path. iconic. 🎀

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

So gereal.conf is a YAML configuration file, and what it does is describe serial console sessions managed by gereal(8). like, it's literally the blueprint. 🦋

It holds two things: the global defaults, and then a list of individual sessions. And for every single session you write down? gereal-generator(8) auto-magically generates a systemd service for it. not you doing it by hand. the generator. we love a delegating moment. ✨

🧚 FILE FORMAT 🧚

Written in YAML, and it's got exactly two top-level keys:

  • defaults — a mapping of default values that get applied to all the sessions, unless a session overrides them. the "everybody wears this unless you say otherwise" section 🫶
  • sessions — a list of session definitions. the main characters 👑

And here's the cute part: both sections can hold the same keys. A key you put in defaults is the default value for that key whenever it's not given in the config of a certain section. so defaults is the fallback bestie 🥺

Each entry in sessions describes one serial console session.

Here's every key that's supported:

  • baudrate — the baud rate for the serial connection. Mandatory. ⭐
  • device — path to the serial device (for example, /dev/ttyUSB0). Mandatory.
  • enable — boolean, says whether the session should be enabled automatically at boot. Default: False. 💤
  • group — the group under which the session runs. Mandatory.
  • name — the logical name of the session. This is the one used to construct the systemd unit name and the screen session name. Mandatory. iykyk 👑
  • screenrc — optional path to a screen configuration file just for this session. Default: /etc/gereal/gereal-<name> if that file exists, otherwise /etc/gereal/screenrc 🎀
  • user — the user account under which the session runs. Mandatory.

🌈 EXAMPLE 🌈

here's the moment you've been waiting for, literally:

defaults:
  baudrate: 115200
  user: _gereal
  group: dialout

sessions:
  - name: router
    device: /dev/ttyUSB0
    baudrate: 9600
    enable: true

ate. no crumbs. 🔥

🫶 NOTES 🫶

⚠️ After modifying gereal.conf, a systemctl daemon-reload is required to regenerate systemd units. do not skip this step bestie, nothing happens without it 😭
🙈 If the configured user or group does not exist, the corresponding systemd service will not be generated. it's just… not gonna show up. so double-check those names fr fr.

💜 SEE ALSO 💜

the whole friend group 💖

⭐ AUTHOR ⭐

Marc Haber <mh+debian-packages@zugschlus.de>

and that's the page!! brought to you by gereal, dated January 2026, manual GEREAL.CONF(5) — slay, bye 💅✨🦋

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