Quickly open a Dell PowerConnect (or anything) serial console in Linux

Find your serial port(s)

dmesg | grep tty

You’ll see…

[   37.531286] serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
[   37.531841] 00:0b: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
[   37.532138] 0000:04:00.3: ttyS1 at I/O 0x1020 (irq = 18) is a 16550A

Looks like one at ttyS0. Access it using

screen /dev/ttyS0

…and you’re in. ‘screen’ also takes a baud rate (such as 19200) if needed.