My original message is:
"Hello managers!
> I've looked through the archives for an answer to this one, but I
> can't
> find the answer that I'm looking for. We use the "stty cols" and "stty
> dec" commands in a generic .profile which runs for everyone, and we
> sometimes receive a message that says "stty: tcgetattr: Not a
> typewriter" immediately after these commands have executed. We've
> noticed that this message appears every time that we use the su
> command
> in a script file; we've been having some problems with aliases being
> set
> and staying set in these script files. Since this message appears
> after
> a certain command has been executed in the .profile, is this an
> indication that the .profile has blown off after the message appears?
> That might explain the trouble with aliases.
>
> What exactly does this message mean? Could it be causing problems with
> aliases being set when the .profile is run?
>
> Thanks for your input (I'll summarize)!"
>
>
>
I think that I liked Berry Kercheval's answer the best:
> "Not a typewriter" is an unfortunate message, that is really only
> meaningful
> in a limited context while the same error can happen in other cases.
>
> A better message is "Innapropriate ioctl for device". (and some
> versions of
> Unix have changed it to this). This error happens when
> the ioctl() function attempts an operation that is not supported, for
> example,
> trying to rewind a tty or to set the baud rate on a magtape.
>
> I suspect that the message is coming from stty because the SU command
> is doing
> something tricky with pseudottys that don't support the options you're
>
> requesting, and the shell is abandoning the .profile after the error.
>
>
>
Thanks to all of those who replied!
-Stephen Spalding
Received on Wed Apr 15 1998 - 02:43:52 NZST