Re: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

Re: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[Travis Siegel]

On Thu, 8 Jan 1998, Rayson Ho wrote:

> Why not Minix on the 286 instead of M$-DOS

Because, minix (or any other variant of linux for that matter) won't work
with vocal-eyes (or any other dos based speech package for that matter)
nor will it work with the communications program (telix) with which he is
trying to log in.  Unfortunately, speech support for linux itself is
minimal and available to only a few select synthesizers.

Re: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[Rayson Ho]

>Hi!  I have Redhat 5, and appreciate your help, since the help from the
>Slackware people hasn't helped much simply because of the differences
>between the two distributions. What I'm trying to do is to connect
>a 286 PC, running only DOS6.2 with my P166 Linux box.  On the DOS side, 
I
>am using Telix for the terminal program.  The serial cable is plugged 
into
>Serial port 1 on that machine.  On my linux machine the serial cable is
>plugged into Serial port2.  I am only using the console in Linux, not
>Xwindows.  I want to make it so that the Dos box will show the login
>prompt, so I can give commands to my Linux box through that computer, 
and
>so that the output for my commands will go to the Dos box.  This is 
just
>like any other dumb terminal situation.  I would prefer doing this at
>57600 BPS, but I can be flexible on that.  Could you give me exact
>instructions on what to type in what file, so that the Dos box can 
emulate
>the Linux box?  I would really appreciate it.
>P.S. I installed the complete Redhat 5 distribution, so i have all of 
the
>files necessary.
>Thanks
>I'm new at linux so try to be obvious so I'll get it
Why not Minix on the 286 instead of M$-DOS

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

Re: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[Luke Davis]

One other quick thing: I'v never used telex.

I recomend you use "commo"; I have used a few different packages, and this
seems to work quite well...

Re: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[Luke Davis]

Just a quick note: using VT100 terminal emu is no problem with speach:
infact - it is recomended.
I do it all the time, and would have it no other way, especially after
using "dumber" terminals.

The slw stuff works fine under rhl (if you have the same software); but I
recall having a hell of a time getting rhl to handle my terminal.

I finally used a mingetty command copied from a console entry, so I could
get my terminal working; then managed to get UUgetty working.

If you have to, though, you can use a redirected sh or bash to the
terminal to get speach while getting getty up & running.

bash </dev/ttyS1 >/dev/ttyS1 2>&1

RE: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[L. C. Robinson]

On Sun, 11 Jan 1998, Chris Peterson wrote:

> 
> 
> On Sunday, January 11, 1998 3:17 PM, Bill Schiavo 
> [SMTP:Wschiavo@concentric.net] wrote:
> > Hello everyone.
> >
> > It's too bad you're not using slakware.  I have set up lots of systems
> > to
> > do exactly what you want, in fact I use Linux (slakware) like that all
> > the
> > time.
> >
> > I considered using Redhat but I found that it is more difficult for me
> > to
> > install and I'm not crazy about RPM.  Don't get me wrong, RPM is a nice
> > package but I couldn't for the life of me get it to build on slakware

I know what you mean, since I tried this before I switched.  See below
for an easy solution.

> > and
> > I am not willing to switch to Redhat for a single package.
> 
> Try rpm2tgz and pkgtool.  I'm not sure how well it works but if there's 
> something that's offered in rpm that you can't find elsewhere, it's worth 
> a try.

There are now a number of packages that provide the ability to convert packages
between different types.  One is called "alien": details on the alien home
page below, which also contains links to a page where you can get precompiled
package managers from other distributions, if you need them:

http://kitenet.net/programs/alien/

BTW, alien 5.20 has a bug which prevents it from converting from debian
to rpm format (I have a work around).

L. C. Robinson
reply to infynity@cyberhighway.net (a family account)

RE: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[Chris Peterson]

On Sunday, January 11, 1998 3:17 PM, Bill Schiavo 
[SMTP:Wschiavo@concentric.net] wrote:
> Hello everyone.
>
> It's too bad you're not using slakware.  I have set up lots of systems
> to
> do exactly what you want, in fact I use Linux (slakware) like that all
> the
> time.
>
> I considered using Redhat but I found that it is more difficult for me
> to
> install and I'm not crazy about RPM.  Don't get me wrong, RPM is a nice
> package but I couldn't for the life of me get it to build on slakware
> and
> I am not willing to switch to Redhat for a single package.

Try rpm2tgz and pkgtool.  I'm not sure how well it works but if there's 
something that's offered in rpm that you can't find elsewhere, it's worth 
a try.

Chris

Re: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[Bill Schiavo]

Hello everyone.

It's too bad you're not using slakware.  I have set up lots of systems to
do exactly what you want, in fact I use Linux (slakware) like that all the
time.

I considered using Redhat but I found that it is more difficult for me to
install and I'm not crazy about RPM.  Don't get me wrong, RPM is a nice
package but I couldn't for the life of me get it to build on slakware and
I am not willing to switch to Redhat for a single package.

Regards!


On Thu, 8 Jan 1998, L. C. Robinson wrote:

> On Thu, 8 Jan 1998, K.C. Habib wrote:
> 
> > Hi!  I have Redhat 5, and appreciate your help, since the help from the
> > Slackware people hasn't helped much simply because of the differences
> > between the two distributions. What I'm trying to do is to connect
> > a 286 PC, running only DOS6.2 with my P166 Linux box.  On the DOS side, I
> > am using Telix for the terminal program.  The serial cable is plugged into
> 
> Well, I note that someone in a later post that I saw today suggested that
> Telix is a poor choice for your use, so I suggest that you find out from
> him what simpler (dumber) program is more appropriate for speech use.
> I know that there are many free terminal emulation programs available for
> Messy-DOS.  Then email me about what terminal protocol you intend to
> use for it, and we can try to write you a suitable gettydefs entry for it.
> Now for what the "protocol" means: both ends must talk the same language,
> that is, we need to know how many bits per character you are using (7
> or 8), whether you are using parity, and, if so, whether it is odd or
> even, and whether you are using 1 or 2 stop bits.  Or you could just
> adopt the protocol I tell you to use on the terminal (286) end, in the
> example below.
> 
> > Serial port 1 on that machine.  On my linux machine the serial cable is
> > plugged into Serial port2.  
> 
> So that would be com2, in MS-DOG terminology, or ttyS1 on Linux.
> 
> > I want to make it so that the Dos box will show the login
> > prompt, so I can give commands to my Linux box through that computer, and
> > so that the output for my commands will go to the Dos box.
> 
> Like any normal terminal, yes.
> 
> > This is just like any other dumb terminal situation.
> 
> As stated by a previous author, though, most terminals are anything
> but "dumb", since they can present you with all sorts of boxed and
> bordered windows, and hilighted, reversed, or bold, and even blinking
> text, and the common vt100 to vt520 series terminals are very adept at
> this.  I should think that this would be nasty stuff for a speech
> synthesizer.  This stuff is all done in Linux/Unix, if the application
> uses them, through a cursor control library known as "curses" or
> "termcap" or "ncurses".  You probably really need to dumb the
> situation down, by setting up a simpler terminal emulation that will
> tell applications that use "curses" that your terminal can't do this
> sort of thing.  You do this on the Linux end by setting your terminal
> type to "dumb".  You set this up initially by putting the terminal
> name "dumb" at end of the getty line in /etc/inittab:
> 
> t1:345:respawn:/sbin/getty -r1 ttyS1 DT9600 dumb
> 
> This can be the last line in the file.  Be VERY careful
> with this file, since messing it up can make your system unbootable.
> Make a rescue disk, and save a copy of the original inittab to
> inittab.original, or something similar.  There are ways you can boot
> the system in an emergency, if you are using LILO, though, and
> this one serial line, if it is the only line that is wrong, will
> only prevent the serial port from working.
> 
> To activate this change, as root (super user) do:
> /sbin/telinit q
> 
> Later we can talk about some old text editors, etc, that do NOT
> use "curses", and are line oriented, such as "ed", or "ex".
> And you could strip the "dumb" terminal description down even
> further, to cripple it even more, so programs can't do undesirable
> things (and they will complain bitterly when they start up, about
> this, some may even die -- but you don't want them anyway).
> 
> > I would prefer doing this at 57600 BPS, but I can be flexible on
> > that.
> 
> Let's get things working at a more conservative speed, at first, since
> some old serial ports can't handle the higher speeds.  Later we can
> increase the speed: we'll start at 9600.   There is a stock entry in
> the default supplied /etc/gettydefs for the "DT9600" label, which you
> can use, if you wish:
> 
> # 9600 baud Dumb Terminal entry
> DT9600# B9600 CS8 CLOCAL # B9600 SANE -ISTRIP CLOCAL #@S login: #DT9600
> 
> This is an 8 bit protocol, and appears to use the protocol default
> (the traditional 8N1).  You can run the following command as root, to
> find out how the serial port is set up:
> 
> stty -a < /dev/ttyS1
> And here is the output (in part):
> speed 9600 baud; rows 0; columns 0; line = 0;
> intr = ^C; quit = ^\; erase = ^?; kill = ^U; eof = ^D; eol = <undef>;
> -parenb -parodd cs8 hupcl -cstopb cread clocal -crtscts
> 
> "man stty" shows that this is indeed a no parity, 1 stop bit setup,
> for the default:
>        [-]parenb
> 			               Generate parity bit in output and expect parity
> 										 bit in input.
>        [-]cstopb
> 			               Use two stop bits per character (one with `-').
> 
> After you get your getty started, you should run the above command 
> (stty -a < /dev/ttyS1) to verify this is the case, and modify your
> settings on both ends, accordingly, till they match (you will know
> when they match, because the output will be intelligible).
> 
> When you have your DOS box set up for 8N1, give it a couple of
> carriage returns and wait a second for the delay we have specified
> (-r1), and you should (we hope) get a login prompt.
> 
> After logging in (you have made a user account, haven't you?), you
> should do:
> echo $TERM
> dumb
> to see if your terminal type is still set to "dumb", or has been
> reset in some default shell startup file to something else, like
> "linux" or "vt100", which are similar to each other.  If you need help
> with this, or anything else, get back to me.  When you get this far,
> then we can look at what speeds your serial ports can handle,
> according to the chips you have in your serial port boards on each
> end, etc, and experiment with increasing the speed (we may, for
> instance, have to use the "setserial" command and "rc.serial" script
> to set up your linux port to accept the higher speeds, on bootup).
> The limitation here is likely to be the older serial ports in the 286:
> the oldest chips can't handle more than 9600 reliably.  New serial
> cards are very cheap now, though (should be less than $15.00).
> 
> > Could you give me exact instructions on what to type in what file,
> 
> Well, I have assumed that you know how to use some editor, and
> know how to access the above mentioned files, and save backup
> copies of them, etc.  If not, I'm not sure how to tutor you, 
> without more detail about where you stand.  You should, of
> course, read the online manuals on your CD, or available
> on the web, for RedHat, and the manuals in the /usr/doc directory,
> according to what is applicable.  There is, for instance, a good
> "Linux Installation and Getting Started Guide" on your disk, and
> also on the web.
> 
> > so that the Dos box can emulate the Linux box?  I would really
> > appreciate it.  P.S. I installed the complete Redhat 5 distribution,
> > so i have all of the files necessary.
> 
> I assume that this means that getty_ps is installed: you can verify
> this by typing:
> rpm -q getty_ps
> and you should get:
> getty_ps-2.0.7h-4
> But the version number might be a bit different, since I am running
> RedHat 4.2, not 5.0
> 
> By the way, after you get things working, you will want to visit the
> "upgrade" directory on RedHat's ftp site (or a mirror), for security
> upgrades and bug fixes (and there are a bunch of files there now).  I am
> waiting till things stabilize a bit more on the new glibc stuff,
> before upgrading.
> 
> L. C. Robinson
> reply to infynity@cyberhighway.net (a family account)
> 
> 
> ---
> Send your message for blinux-list to blinux-list@redhat.com
> Blinux software archive at ftp://leb.net/pub/blinux
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> To unsubscribe send mail to blinux-list-request@redhat.com
> with subject line: unsubscribe
> 
> 

RE: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[Chris Peterson]

On Saturday, January 10, 1998 6:36 PM, L. C. Robinson 
[SMTP:lcr@draken.localnet] wrote		Hmmmmmmm...  The adduser script is 
text-based.  There's also setup.tty, netconfig.tty... well... just about 
any administration tool I've needed to use has a .tty equivilant which is 
usually sufficient.  And, of course, you can just edit files manually too 
as you already pointed out.  I haven't been doing this for a long time, 
I'm still learning, but Redhat was basically out of the question for me. 
 I tried it and it was just to much of a paine to even try to use the gui 
and I didn't find anything text-based as an equivilant.

Slackware uses .tgz packages instead of rpms.  There is an rpm2tgz utility 
available but I don't know how well it works.

The way I figure it, any distribution is just like any other distribution 
because, since it's all the same os you can steel parts from the ones you 
like.

Oh, and btw, thanks for the Caldera info.  I visit that site quite often 
in fact.  They've got some interesting products.

Chris:
> On Sat, 10 Jan 1998, Chris Peterson wrote:
>
> > 3. Slackware's pkgtool.tty, installpkg, and removepkg are far easier
> > for
> > someone who requires speech than any gui utils.
>
> Then these are the Slackware equivalent, I suppose, of "rpm"
> which is the RedHat command line installer?  Does Slackware have
> any text based system administration utilities beyond these
> installation utilities?  RedHat's rpm system is well known
> to be a superior installation system, and should be very easy
> for blind users to use.  But the graphical Glint front end is
> a real pain most of the time, in my opinion, even if you can
> see fine, though there are rare situations where I use it.
>
> > 4. A smart terminal will eventually be required to use most
> > applications
> > anyway so why not get it configured off the bat rather than have to
> > switch
> > later.  So what if something draws a box.  It's better than not being
> > able
> > to run it at all because it doesn't understand a dumb terminal.
>
> I see your point.  In case it's any help, I might point out that
> it's possible to have it both ways, so that programs that work better
> with a dumb terminal interface can run that way automatically.  Just
> put this in your .zshrc file (assuming you use zsh, not bash):
> alias trn='TERM=dumb trn'
> and then trn will run with the "dumb" terminal description,
> but everything else will run with say, vt100.
> Probably someone should create a a special terminal description
> that is optimized for blind users: call it "linux-blind" or something,
> and then, where appropriate, people could have an alias like:
> alias les='TERM=linux-blind less'
>
> I have worked with modifying terminal descriptions a bit, and if
> anyone is interested, would be willing to help anyway I can in this.
> But, while I do have a print disability, I am not blind, so I don't
> know what is needed.  It would be easy to take a vt100 terminal
> description, and strip out whatever features blind users
> find most annoying or useless, or stick bells in instead, for,
> say, hilighting or underlined text, but I would need to be told
> what to change, if I was to help.
>
> L. C. Robinson
> reply to infynity@cyberhighway.net (a family account)

Re: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[Jude Dashiell]

I'm not trying to sell software, but I'm a registered user of commo and
that's up to version 7.5 by now.
Another package that works without the registration is mskermit 3.15.
One of the problems I had with telix was bleeding screens.
You'd be finished with one screen and moved onto another and
the program didn't clean up after itself.  
Another problem I had with telix was nickel and dime registration policy.
With commo, you pay your registration fee one time in your life and
that's it.  True it's $50.00, but
you can upgrade to any future versions and have them as registered
versions
on your machine without having  to send in another $5.00 because someone
at the
company decided to increment the version counter.



Jude <dashiell@clark.net>

Re: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[Nicolas Pitre]

On Fri, 9 Jan 1998, Travis Siegel wrote:

> A simple agetty line like I mentioned before works just perfectly for what
> this person is trying to do.  a speed of 38400, and vt100 emulation is
> just fine, since all the communications programs I've ever seen work with
> vt100 emulation (even if they're in ansi emulation mode) Why make this
> more complicated than it has to be.  Give the guy a break.

Just right...
I agree.

Re: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[L. C. Robinson]

On Thu, 8 Jan 1998, Jude Dashiell wrote:

> First, there is one and only one dumb terminal situation.
> Terminals can be defined as dumb and all the remote will send them is text
> spaces, and carriage returns.
> Telix usually doesn't run under a dumb  terminal situation in any event.
> I'm a registered user of the program and gave up on it several years ago
> for
> good cause.

So, if I understand you right, some fairly dumb terminal emulation program
is better than Telix, in this situation, and you use such a program?  If,
so, some readers here might like to know what works well for you.  Perhaps
you could post the specifics?

> The vt emulations and ansi and avatar emulations are not dumb terminal
> emulations.  That's because escape codes are passed over the cable for
> such things
> as cursor control; key redefinition, and in some cases text insertion but
> it takes
> an emulation better than ansi under dos 6.22 to do that effectively.

The standard "ansi" terminal description you usually get, when you say:
export TERM=ansi
is a fairly pessimistic, dumb one.   There some much better ones that
have been built up for specific ansi emulation, that you can find out
about by looking through /etc/termcap, and searching for the string
"ansi".

Lynn C. Robinson
reply to infynity@cyberhighway.net (a family account)

Re: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[L. C. Robinson]

On Thu, 8 Jan 1998, K.C. Habib wrote:

> Hi!  I have Redhat 5, and appreciate your help, since the help from the
> Slackware people hasn't helped much simply because of the differences
> between the two distributions. What I'm trying to do is to connect
> a 286 PC, running only DOS6.2 with my P166 Linux box.  On the DOS side, I
> am using Telix for the terminal program.  The serial cable is plugged into

Well, I note that someone in a later post that I saw today suggested that
Telix is a poor choice for your use, so I suggest that you find out from
him what simpler (dumber) program is more appropriate for speech use.
I know that there are many free terminal emulation programs available for
Messy-DOS.  Then email me about what terminal protocol you intend to
use for it, and we can try to write you a suitable gettydefs entry for it.
Now for what the "protocol" means: both ends must talk the same language,
that is, we need to know how many bits per character you are using (7
or 8), whether you are using parity, and, if so, whether it is odd or
even, and whether you are using 1 or 2 stop bits.  Or you could just
adopt the protocol I tell you to use on the terminal (286) end, in the
example below.

> Serial port 1 on that machine.  On my linux machine the serial cable is
> plugged into Serial port2.  

So that would be com2, in MS-DOG terminology, or ttyS1 on Linux.

> I want to make it so that the Dos box will show the login
> prompt, so I can give commands to my Linux box through that computer, and
> so that the output for my commands will go to the Dos box.

Like any normal terminal, yes.

> This is just like any other dumb terminal situation.

As stated by a previous author, though, most terminals are anything
but "dumb", since they can present you with all sorts of boxed and
bordered windows, and hilighted, reversed, or bold, and even blinking
text, and the common vt100 to vt520 series terminals are very adept at
this.  I should think that this would be nasty stuff for a speech
synthesizer.  This stuff is all done in Linux/Unix, if the application
uses them, through a cursor control library known as "curses" or
"termcap" or "ncurses".  You probably really need to dumb the
situation down, by setting up a simpler terminal emulation that will
tell applications that use "curses" that your terminal can't do this
sort of thing.  You do this on the Linux end by setting your terminal
type to "dumb".  You set this up initially by putting the terminal
name "dumb" at end of the getty line in /etc/inittab:

t1:345:respawn:/sbin/getty -r1 ttyS1 DT9600 dumb

This can be the last line in the file.  Be VERY careful
with this file, since messing it up can make your system unbootable.
Make a rescue disk, and save a copy of the original inittab to
inittab.original, or something similar.  There are ways you can boot
the system in an emergency, if you are using LILO, though, and
this one serial line, if it is the only line that is wrong, will
only prevent the serial port from working.

To activate this change, as root (super user) do:
/sbin/telinit q

Later we can talk about some old text editors, etc, that do NOT
use "curses", and are line oriented, such as "ed", or "ex".
And you could strip the "dumb" terminal description down even
further, to cripple it even more, so programs can't do undesirable
things (and they will complain bitterly when they start up, about
this, some may even die -- but you don't want them anyway).

> I would prefer doing this at 57600 BPS, but I can be flexible on
> that.

Let's get things working at a more conservative speed, at first, since
some old serial ports can't handle the higher speeds.  Later we can
increase the speed: we'll start at 9600.   There is a stock entry in
the default supplied /etc/gettydefs for the "DT9600" label, which you
can use, if you wish:

# 9600 baud Dumb Terminal entry
DT9600# B9600 CS8 CLOCAL # B9600 SANE -ISTRIP CLOCAL #@S login: #DT9600

This is an 8 bit protocol, and appears to use the protocol default
(the traditional 8N1).  You can run the following command as root, to
find out how the serial port is set up:

stty -a < /dev/ttyS1
And here is the output (in part):
speed 9600 baud; rows 0; columns 0; line = 0;
intr = ^C; quit = ^\; erase = ^?; kill = ^U; eof = ^D; eol = <undef>;
-parenb -parodd cs8 hupcl -cstopb cread clocal -crtscts

"man stty" shows that this is indeed a no parity, 1 stop bit setup,
for the default:
       [-]parenb
			               Generate parity bit in output and expect parity
										 bit in input.
       [-]cstopb
			               Use two stop bits per character (one with `-').

After you get your getty started, you should run the above command 
(stty -a < /dev/ttyS1) to verify this is the case, and modify your
settings on both ends, accordingly, till they match (you will know
when they match, because the output will be intelligible).

When you have your DOS box set up for 8N1, give it a couple of
carriage returns and wait a second for the delay we have specified
(-r1), and you should (we hope) get a login prompt.

After logging in (you have made a user account, haven't you?), you
should do:
echo $TERM
dumb
to see if your terminal type is still set to "dumb", or has been
reset in some default shell startup file to something else, like
"linux" or "vt100", which are similar to each other.  If you need help
with this, or anything else, get back to me.  When you get this far,
then we can look at what speeds your serial ports can handle,
according to the chips you have in your serial port boards on each
end, etc, and experiment with increasing the speed (we may, for
instance, have to use the "setserial" command and "rc.serial" script
to set up your linux port to accept the higher speeds, on bootup).
The limitation here is likely to be the older serial ports in the 286:
the oldest chips can't handle more than 9600 reliably.  New serial
cards are very cheap now, though (should be less than $15.00).

> Could you give me exact instructions on what to type in what file,

Well, I have assumed that you know how to use some editor, and
know how to access the above mentioned files, and save backup
copies of them, etc.  If not, I'm not sure how to tutor you, 
without more detail about where you stand.  You should, of
course, read the online manuals on your CD, or available
on the web, for RedHat, and the manuals in the /usr/doc directory,
according to what is applicable.  There is, for instance, a good
"Linux Installation and Getting Started Guide" on your disk, and
also on the web.

> so that the Dos box can emulate the Linux box?  I would really
> appreciate it.  P.S. I installed the complete Redhat 5 distribution,
> so i have all of the files necessary.

I assume that this means that getty_ps is installed: you can verify
this by typing:
rpm -q getty_ps
and you should get:
getty_ps-2.0.7h-4
But the version number might be a bit different, since I am running
RedHat 4.2, not 5.0

By the way, after you get things working, you will want to visit the
"upgrade" directory on RedHat's ftp site (or a mirror), for security
upgrades and bug fixes (and there are a bunch of files there now).  I am
waiting till things stabilize a bit more on the new glibc stuff,
before upgrading.

L. C. Robinson
reply to infynity@cyberhighway.net (a family account)

Re: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[Travis Siegel]

A simple agetty line like I mentioned before works just perfectly for what
this person is trying to do.  a speed of 38400, and vt100 emulation is
just fine, since all the communications programs I've ever seen work with
vt100 emulation (even if they're in ansi emulation mode) Why make this
more complicated than it has to be.  Give the guy a break.

Re: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[Jude Dashiell]

First, there is one and only one dumb terminal situation.
Terminals can be defined as dumb and all the remote will send them is text
spaces, and carriage returns.
Telix usually doesn't run under a dumb  terminal situation in any event.
I'm a registered user of the program and gave up on it several years ago
for
good cause.
The vt emulations and ansi and avatar emulations are not dumb terminal
emulations.  That's because escape codes are passed over the cable for
such things
as cursor control; key redefinition, and in some cases text insertion but
it takes
an emulation better than ansi under dos 6.22 to do that effectively.
In unix, dumb is a valid terminal definition and very specific as are
vt102;
vt100, vt52 vt220 ETC.



Jude <dashiell@clark.net>

Re: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[Travis Siegel]

I don't agree with this assessment of dumb terminals.  I've quite
successfully used my pc with a standard communications program quite
successfully both as a terminal for linux and system V.  I have had no
problems with either setup, so I cannot agree with your statement that
unix terminals won't work with telix (or any other communications program
for that matter)

Re: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[K.C. Habib]

Hi!  I have Redhat 5, and appreciate your help, since the help from the
Slackware people hasn't helped much simply because of the differences
between the two distributions. What I'm trying to do is to connect
a 286 PC, running only DOS6.2 with my P166 Linux box.  On the DOS side, I
am using Telix for the terminal program.  The serial cable is plugged into
Serial port 1 on that machine.  On my linux machine the serial cable is
plugged into Serial port2.  I am only using the console in Linux, not
Xwindows.  I want to make it so that the Dos box will show the login
prompt, so I can give commands to my Linux box through that computer, and
so that the output for my commands will go to the Dos box.  This is just
like any other dumb terminal situation.  I would prefer doing this at
57600 BPS, but I can be flexible on that.  Could you give me exact
instructions on what to type in what file, so that the Dos box can emulate
the Linux box?  I would really appreciate it.
P.S. I installed the complete Redhat 5 distribution, so i have all of the
files necessary.
Thanks
I'm new at linux so try to be obvious so I'll get it

Re: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[L. C. Robinson]

On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, Travis Siegel wrote:

> On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, K.C. Habib wrote:
> 
> > I would really appreciate detailed instructions on how to set up a DOS PC
> > as a dumb terminal to Linux.  I have a DOS machine, with Telix, Vocal
> > Eyes, and a serial cable.  I just installed Redhat 5, I tried editing the
> > /etc/initab file but I am not still quite sure what to add.
> > I had such a terminal set up, but I just installed Redhat 5, and I lost my
> > configuration files.
> 
> I don't use redhat, but for slackware, the lines you need to change in the
> /etc/inittab look like the following;
> # Serial lines
> #s1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 9600 ttyS0 vt100
> #s2:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 ttyS1 vt100
> 
> To make it so you can log in on these ports, simply remove the number sign
> "#" from the beginning of the line, reboot, and you should be able to log
> in via either serial port.  (assuming you're using com1 or com2 on the
> linux machine)  You'll need a null modem cable (or a straight through
> cable, and a null modem adapter)  I honestly don't know why the linux
> installs don't have the lines uncommented, so we can log in from the get
> go, but perhaps there's a reason. :)  Hope this helps.
 
Well, I DO run RedHat, and I can tell you that the above advice, which
is pretty much the same as a few other messages, is inadequate.
There are too many different terminal types, and serial protocols, and
at least 4 different getty programs available, for this to work in any
but a few situations.  Your best bet is to read the Serial-HOWTO (in
/usr/doc/HOWTO/Serial-HOWTO on a RedHat box), and the getty and
gettydefs man page, and the man page for inittab, thoroughly.  I have
set up several different terminals, and can give you examples which
you could modify.  I use the getty_ps version, which RedHat provides.
The mingetty stuff that they set up by default, for the console, is
only good for the console.  If you want a canned example, I will give
you one, if you will tell me what kind of terminal you are running (or
in your case, emulating, on the dos box), with what protocol (this may
be obvious to others, but I am not blind, and do not run and any kind
of vocal hardware, though I do have a print disability).

Here is an example, for getty_ps, the getty version which I recommend:
In /etc/inittab:
For com2:
t1:345:respawn:/sbin/getty -r1 ttyS1 DT19200 vt100
For com5:
t4:345:respawn:/sbin/getty -r1 ttyS4 vt100-DEC vt100

Note that the vt100-DEC is just an arbitrary label for which protocol
to use in the gettydefs.  The DT19200 is a stock label for a stock
dumb terminal line in the default gettydefs.  You may want to delete
the "-r1" unless you know what it's for (can help with getty
respawning too fast messages, but requires you to type something at
the terminal end, to get a login prompt).

In /etc/gettydefs:
vt100-DEC#  B19200 SANE CS8 PARENB -PARODD CLOCAL -IGNPAR -ISTRIP CRTSCTS # B19200 SANE PARENB -PARODD CS8 -ISTRIP TAB3 -IGNPAR CRTSCTS CLOCAL #@L\nEnter your login name: #vt100-DEC

This terminal is running at a speed of 19200 (B19200), 8 bits (CS8:
you might do better with CS7, to eliminate or garble line drawing
characters), even parity, and has a customized login prompt.  If you
change the speed or protocol, you must change it in both sections of
the long (single) line.  Do "man stty" to get in on the meanings of
the various protocol names, which you must do in uppercase.

You may also want an /etc/conf.getty file, for more control (mine puts
the date and time, and some other stuff on the screen).

I have no idea how you set up Telix on the other end, to use a
matching protocol, and speed.

L. C. Robinson
reply to infynity@cyberhighway.net (a family account)

Re: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[K.C. Habib]

Which line you should use?  Does it matter?
Thanks for your help
On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, Travis
Siegel wrote:
> I don't use redhat, but for slackware, the lines you need to change in the
> /etc/inittab look like the following;
> # Serial lines
> #s1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 9600 ttyS0 vt100
> #s2:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 ttyS1 vt100
> 
> To make it so you can log in on these ports, simply remove the number sign
> "#" from the beginning of the line, reboot, and you should be able to log
> in via either serial port.  (assuming you're using com1 or com2 on the
> linux machine)  You'll need a null modem cable (or a straight through
> cable, and a null modem adapter)  I honestly don't know why the linux
> installs don't have the lines uncommented, so we can log in from the get
> go, but perhaps there's a reason. :)  Hope this helps.
> 
> 
> ---
> Send your message for blinux-list to blinux-list@redhat.com
> Blinux software archive at ftp://leb.net/pub/blinux
> Blinux web page at http://leb.net/blinux
> To unsubscribe send mail to blinux-list-request@redhat.com
> with subject line: unsubscribe
> 

help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[K.C. Habib]

I would really appreciate detailed instructions on how to set up a DOS PC
as a dumb terminal to Linux.  I have a DOS machine, with Telix, Vocal
Eyes, and a serial cable.  I just installed Redhat 5, I tried editing the
/etc/initab file but I am not still quite sure what to add.
I had such a terminal set up, but I just installed Redhat 5, and I lost my
configuration files.
If someone could just tell me what to do so that Linux will allow logins
from serial port1, so that I can access the Linux box from the DOS box, I
would be greatful.

Thanks

Re: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[Trevor Astrope]

Hi, I've done this on Slackware 3.0, but it should work fine under RH 5.0
as well.

Edit /etc/inittab with either of these lines:

s1:12345:respawn:/sbin/getty ttyS0 DT38400 vt100

or 

s1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty -L 38400 ttyS0 vt100

Save the /etc/inittab file and type 'init q' at the prompt.

One of those should get you a serial terminal on /dev/ttyS0 (or com1) on
the Linux box running at 38400 baud using vt100 terminal emulation. 

Trevor

You wrote:

> I would really appreciate detailed instructions on how to set up a DOS PC
> as a dumb terminal to Linux.  I have a DOS machine, with Telix, Vocal
> Eyes, and a serial cable.  I just installed Redhat 5, I tried editing the
> /etc/initab file but I am not still quite sure what to add.
> I had such a terminal set up, but I just installed Redhat 5, and I lost my
> configuration files.
> If someone could just tell me what to do so that Linux will allow logins
> from serial port1, so that I can access the Linux box from the DOS box, I
> would be greatful.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> 
> ---
> Send your message for blinux-list to blinux-list@redhat.com
> Blinux software archive at ftp://leb.net/pub/blinux
> Blinux web page at http://leb.net/blinux
> To unsubscribe send mail to blinux-list-request@redhat.com
> with subject line: unsubscribe
> 
> 

Re: help with seting up a dumb terminal to Linux please

[Travis Siegel]

On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, K.C. Habib wrote:

> I would really appreciate detailed instructions on how to set up a DOS PC
> as a dumb terminal to Linux.  I have a DOS machine, with Telix, Vocal
> Eyes, and a serial cable.  I just installed Redhat 5, I tried editing the
> /etc/initab file but I am not still quite sure what to add.
> I had such a terminal set up, but I just installed Redhat 5, and I lost my
> configuration files.

I don't use redhat, but for slackware, the lines you need to change in the
/etc/inittab look like the following;
# Serial lines
#s1:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 9600 ttyS0 vt100
#s2:12345:respawn:/sbin/agetty 38400 ttyS1 vt100

To make it so you can log in on these ports, simply remove the number sign
"#" from the beginning of the line, reboot, and you should be able to log
in via either serial port.  (assuming you're using com1 or com2 on the
linux machine)  You'll need a null modem cable (or a straight through
cable, and a null modem adapter)  I honestly don't know why the linux
installs don't have the lines uncommented, so we can log in from the get
go, but perhaps there's a reason. :)  Hope this helps.