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

[Bill Schiavo <Wschiavo@concentric.net>]

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)
> 
> 
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