Stty problems

[FT Rathore <gnuser news icns com>]

I recently discovered a problem in gnome-session and gmc that completely
hangs my X session. It could be a OS issue too. It happens because I have
the command
	stty erase '^h' 
in my .bashrc 

My .xinitrc is as follows
#************* .xinitrc ************
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin
gnome-session

## End .xinitrc


Now as soon as the panel or gmc tries to exec an app. It hangs the
Xsession. And I can see the stty command in the process table. It never
exits.

The stty command goes into infinite loop and keeps catching SIGTTOU
--
ioctl(0, SNDCTL_TMR_STOP, {B38400 opost isig icanon echo ...}) = ?
ERESTARTSYS (To be restarted)
--- SIGTTOU (Stopped (tty output)) ---
ioctl(0, SNDCTL_TMR_STOP, {B38400 opost isig icanon echo ...}) = ?
ERESTARTSYS (To be restarted)
--- SIGTTOU (Stopped (tty output)) ---
ioctl(0, SNDCTL_TMR_STOP, {B38400 opost isig icanon echo ...}) = ?
ERESTARTSYS (To be restarted)
--

I can eliminate the problem by commenting out the stty command. But still
there are a lot of commands that need a terminal association, and any of
those commands end up hanging my X session. For example:
If I make a link on my desktop (gmc) for a command like

/usr/games/mame pacman  # mame is using svgalib here

Now in properties if I select the button Use Terminal, everything goes OK.
And if i deselect the Use Terminal Button. It hangs when it tries to exec.
mame.
program usuall hange at ioctl call:

ioctl(0, VT_WAITACTIVE)

I could not find anything on this IOCTL call.
I will soon try to write a detailed report on what happens. But the
explaination might be obvuios to somebody and it might save me all the
trouble.

I had the same problem with KDE one year ago, but instead of trying to
understand the problem, everybody on the KDE Mailing list started jumping
all over me. I hope I figure it out this time.