Comment 21 for bug 49251

May 2012
I also found that tilp was a bit confusing to use out of the box:

Ubuntu 11.04 (KDE)
TI-89 Titanium
Black USB Cable "DirectLink"
The version of tilp in the repository is 1.13

I tried to install versions 1.14,1.15,1.16 from source, but they all asked for a newer version of GTK2.
*** If tilp can be run in console mode, then why do I need GTK???

#sudo aptitude install tilp

Running the program the first time
#sudo tilp
it will execute because it defaults to the serial interface.
However it won't find your calculator.

The program defaults to manual configuration, so you can try to guess the settings:
#sudo tilp --calc=ti89t --cable=DirectLink --port=4

However, if you get it wrong, you might get an error like:

Msg: illegal operation or argument.
Cause: the program which uses this library is buggy. Fire-up the developer!
System: No such file or directory (errno = 2)

*** This should be a more helpful error??
And the GUI will still load. It's not immediately obvious, other than the error on the console, that it didn't work.
But if you click the "DirList" button you'll get an error.

But if you specify the correct configuration, such as:
#sudo tilp --calc=ti89t --cable=DirectLink --port=1
the GUI will load with no console error.
If you click the "DirList" button, the console will show a listing of the files on your calculator.
To copy a *.89p file, just drag it into the left window. Note, don't set your calculator to "receive" mode, or it won't work.

You can also tell tilp to auto-detect your configuration.
#sudo pico /root/.tilp
and change
auto_detect=0
to
auto_detect=1

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