stty and Fedora 9

[Albert E. Sten-Clanton]

Greetings!  

Using speakup-modified Fedora 9, when I type the command

stty rows 50

or some other variation to change the number of lines on the screen, I get the message

stty: standard input: No such device or address

It does the same with the cols command.

I confirmed yesterday what I said in my message about this here tend days ago, that the command works fine on Fedora 8.  It worked whether I used the version of coreutils that comes with Fedora 8, 6.9, or versions 6.10 or 6.11, which I installed from source.  I got the error message again after using the DVD image to upgrade again to Fedora 9.  (The problem occurs whether I do an upgrade or a fresh install.)

I'll be grateful for any help or pointers to help.  My several google searches have given me nothing I can use.  I don't want to lose the ability to jack up the number of lines on my screen on the fly.

Thanks!

Al