Send break with minicom

Getting old and not something I typically have to do much these days but short reminder to myself of how to send a break command to a serial port or console using minicom. Usually this is me knobbing around when I forget some Cisco device login and need to do the lovely password recovery process like THIS

TLDR

The short answer is Ctrl+A then f

Step by step

Setup your console config as usual e.g: sudo minicom -s then connect to the device with it powered off e.g. Cisco router and start minicom with sudo minicom you should see a similar screen to this:

Next hit Ctrl+a to bring up the menu at the bottom of the terminal as below (see the white menu bar at the bottom of the window now):

Now power on the device if you are doing a password recovery like on a lovely Cisco box. Hit f and you should break the boot sequence to drop you into rommon mode:

Job done :)

You can also hit Ctrl+a then z to bring up this help/reminder menu at any point:

Simple stuff but sadly something I seem to regularly forget now i dont do it so often.....

m00nie