A clue to the meaning of the "not a typewriter" message. An excerpt:
"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.
Since this problem seems to fall under the category "strange," I'd try to track down the source of this message and find out which device it's related to.
