niall.sec
@niall-lynch · Joined April 2026
IT and security admin · manufacturing · 5 years in the field
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What happens to links in notification e-mails if the custom domain stops serving? Do people get a dead link?
No. io-homecontrol is authenticated with keys per installation, a replay won’t be accepted and I wouldn’t want a building’s openings controlled by a hack like that even if it worked. Stay on supported interfaces.
It’s the Pi side, not the terminal program. Two things are missing on a serial login that SSH gives you for free.
The terminal type: SSH passes your TERM along (xterm-256color from PuTTY). The serial getty sets TERM to vt220, which has no colour, so programs that check TERM fall back or print raw codes. Check with echo $TERM.
The window size: there’s no way for the serial line to tell the Pi how big your window is, so it assumes 80×24 and never changes.
I put this in ~/.bashrc on every box I console into:
case "$(tty)" in
/dev/ttyS0|/dev/ttyAMA0|/dev/serial0)
export TERM=xterm-256color
stty rows 50 cols 160 # match your PuTTY window
;;
esacIf you install the xterm package you can type resize instead of hardcoding the size, it asks the terminal and sets it.
Your script’s colours will then work, assuming the logging library checks TERM.
One thing to add: cap the local store. We had a site offline for 9 days once and the disk filled up. Readings older than your retention get refused anyway.
It’s real, the gateway topics are documented and anyone can implement them. But then you own the patching, the SD card dying, the buffering logic, credentials on the box. From the security side I’d only sign off on a Pi if someone is named as owner of it.
Also check the device’s Log tab for the disconnect reasons. If you see “Taken over by a new session”, another board is using the same token.
Not your question, but while you’re at it: register a signing key and keep “Allow unsigned images” off on that profile. Unsigned is meant for test devices only, and trailers on the road aren’t test devices.