kbdcontrol: setting keyboard rate: Inappropriate ioctl for device

[esmith]

# kbdcontrol -r normal
kbdcontrol: setting keyboard rate: Inappropriate ioctl for device
# kbdcontrol -r fast
kbdcontrol: setting keyboard rate: Inappropriate ioctl for device
# kbdcontrol -r 250.34
kbdcontrol: setting keyboard rate: Inappropriate ioctl for device
When using kbdcontrol in X or ssh, the command results in the error 
shown. This does not happen from the regular console.