plotters and tty fix

[Vincent Fox]

Here's the fixes I just sent another guy on getting a plotter to work
sensibly when running off the tty port on a Personal Iris:

A friend mentioned you also had some problems with SGIs and plotters.
My problems seemed to be all related to flow control. Namely that a
'stty -a </dev/ttyd2' returned values like '-ixon ixany ixoff' and similar
undesirable settings. Setting them on the command line didn't seem to have
any effect. This is because as it turns out, the moment after issuing the
command it is as though you had logged onto that port, issued a command,
and logged out. The port gets the change during that session, but reverts
to default state after logout.

The fix is to issue a long sleep command or something at startup to keep
that port 'active'. Stick the following 3 lines at the end of /etc/rc2:
sleep 100000000</dev/ttyd2 &
sleep 2
stty ixon -ixany -ixoff</dev/ttyd2

Other stty setting like the various 'echo' controls may need changing,
depending on your plotter.

You of course need to use either the system manager menu or just modify
the line in /etc/inittab so that getty listens to port ttyd2. I really
like the fact that IRIX 3.3.2 supports lpr now. Just add a new entry to
/etc/printcap, make a /etc/hosts.lpd, and you've got a network accesible
plotter that Suns or anything can get at.

Now after reboot, do another 'stty -a </dev/ttyd2', you should see that
port is now locked on your desired values (at least as long as the sleep
command runs for).

Drop me a line if any clarification is needed.
-- 
Vincent Fox (That's Mr. Bucko to you)|"The bear and Carl lived together in the
Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA             |cave for several years until, one day, the
SR-71: gt1111a at prism.gatech.edu      |true savagery of Nature being unleashed,
Pony Express:...!gatech!prism!gt1111a|Carl killed and ate him."    -Gary Larson