Terminal Access using USB <-> USB cable

[Manoj Gudi]

Finally we've been able to make debug-peer(dbp source: https://github.com/manojgudi/dbp) scripts redundant.

Hardware:

Here's the schematic:

[Machine-1] USB  <-->  Serial TTL  <=x=> Serial TTL <--->  USB [Machine-2]

This is a very cheap hack to communicate via USB ports
USB <--> Serial TTL is done by chip called CP2102 (can also be replaced by any other equivalent chip like FTDI)

Serial TTL <=x=> Serial TTL is a cross connect of Rx/Tx and CTS/RTS of each sides.

Software:

The idea is to enable upstart init to start getty on given port(/dev/ttyUSB0 in this case)
http://superuser.com/questions/122353/how-can-i-login-to-ubuntu-using-a-usb-serial-port 

we can access shell in user space simply by changing ownership of /dev/ttyUSB* to user; and then accessing it via gtk_term (with RTS/CTS as flow control)

<check gtk_term.png>

This is largely helpful since there is no easy way to debug Aakash(running ubuntu) or any other Linux machine, which is not in network. Complete shell access is available.
The hardware is cheap and open.

Further the data can be extended to low speed data transfer (up to 100kBps) for small files.