using tty as console

[Patrick Wolfe]

I would like to use a plain old character terminal as the UNIX system console
(/dev/console) on our lone IRIS 4D70G, while continuing to let people login and
use the graphics display and keyboard.

The terminal works fine as just another dumb tty when I enable getty on ttyd1.
When I enter the PROM monitor, "setenv console d" and reboot, ttyd1 comes up as
the "UNIX console" okay, but the graphics terminal stops working completely.

What can I do to get a window with a "login:" prompt on our graphics terminal
when it's not the "console"?  Simply enabling getty on "grcons" doesn't do it,
nor does running "/etc/gl/restartgl".

Also, can someone tell me what the undocumented "-s" switch on /etc/getty does
(it's used on the t1 line in /etc/inittab)?

BTW, the "IRIS 4D Owners Guide" should contain this message in table 5-6:
	WARNING!  Do not "setenv console d" unless you have a terminal that
	works correctly connected to tty port 1.  Failure to heed this warning
	could result in an unusable workstation.

-- 

        Patrick Wolfe   (pat at kai.com, kailand!pat)
        System Manager, Kuck & Associates, Inc.
	"Optimizing software for supercomputers"