[Newlug] dumb terminal

[Tim Bolz]

I am running Ubuntu 10.04 and have a Dorio 20 Dumb terminal hooked up
to my pc through the serial port.  This is old school.  Here's a link
for a what it is. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_terminal  I
had an email discussion about dumb terminal with a windows user and he
thought I was talking about a thin client which is completely
different.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_client   It is like
hitting Ctrl+Alt+F1-F6 but on a separate keyboard and monitor.  I
found it very usefull when X froze and and you could use the keyboard
to reset X.  I would go over to the Dorio log in and kill X and X
would restart.  The things you will need to hook a dumb terminal up is
one serial cable and null modem adapter and of course the dumb
terminal.

Well I haven't used it in a while so I thought I'd start it up.  It
didn't work and then I realized I hadn't configured it yet.    I
forgot how to so I looked at some old notes. The notes were from
Ubuntu 7.04 and they didn't work. So I  had to do some google searches
and finally found out how to do it. Here is what I did so if anyone
else wants to do it they don't have to go through the searches like I
did.

In a terminal run these commands.

cd /etc/init
sudo cp tty1.conf ttyS0.conf
sudo gedit ttyS0.conf

change the tty1 to ttyS0 at the top
and add
exec /sbin/getty -L ttyS0 9600 vt100
either # the below line or delete it
#exec /sbin/getty -8 38400 tty1

So it should look something like this.

# ttyS0 - getty
#
# This service maintains a getty on tty1 from the point the system is
# started until it is shut down again.

start on stopped rc RUNLEVEL=[2345]
stop on runlevel [!2345]

respawn
exec /sbin/getty -L ttyS0 9600 vt100
#exec /sbin/getty -8 38400 tty1

Save it and then run this command.
sudo start ttyS0

The dumb terminal should start.

I can bring the cable , null modem and the Dorio Dumb terminal to the
LUG for a demonstration.  I would need a laptop with a serial
connector though.  I have never tried a usb to rs232 though so if
someone brought one we could try it.

Tim