With grub-0.95-3.1, the Serial console does not work properly. Using this grub.conf gives different behaviour on RHEL3 and RHEL4: default=0 timeout=5 serial --unit=0 --speed=9600 terminal --timeout=5 serial console password --md5 $1$6OscskD3$fUuBZ5w4AFtyFZmpThLNF. title Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS (2.6.9-5.ELsmp) root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-5.ELsmp ro root=/dev/system/root console=ttyS0,9600 rhgb quiet selinux=0 initrd /initrd-2.6.9-5.ELsmp.img On RHEL3, this gives us a 5 second timeout to hit a key on either the console or the serial terminal, and whichever we hit the key on then becomes the controlling console. If no key is hit, after a 5 second time out, the terminal becomes the controlling console. On RHEL4 however, the serial terminal effectively goes dead and after the 5 second timeout on the console, that becomes unresponsive too. The only way to actually cause grub to load is to hit a key on the console during the 5 second timeout - the console then becomes the controlling console and grub displays.
With RHEL3 u5 on a Sun v20z I found the same problem than described above for RHEL4: I can't find a way to reboot the system without keyboard interaction on the serial console. I'm kickstarting the system off a Satellite Server. For "Extra Kernel Parameters" in the Kickstart Profile Options I use serial=0,9600n8 console=ttyS0 console=tty0 nofb In the append line of the pxe config file, i only use nofb serial=0,9600n8 console=ttyS0 because if I add console=tty0, there only appears "AT" on the serial console when the install starts and the progress is invisible. Now I found out, that I see the grub menu, if i comment out the following two lines from /boot/grub/grub.conf: #serial --unit=0 --speed=9600 #terminal --timeout=10 serial console This seems to work because the BIOS of the v20z is already set up to send its output to the serial port. Next I tried kickstarting the system but this time with empty "Extra Kernel Parameters" in the Kickstart Profile Options. I left the append in the PXE config file so that I can see the progress of the install. When Kickstart finished, it reboots the system and with some luck I can see "any k" or just nothing meaningful. Without keyboard interaction, it does not boot. The two lines mentioned above (serial, terminal) still appear in the generated grub.conf. As a workaround, I use the following script in postinstall to deactivate the serial and terminal line: sed -e 's/^serial/#serial/; s/^terminal/#terminal/' \ < /boot/grub/grub.conf > /tmp/grub.tmp mv -f /tmp/grub.tmp /boot/grub/grub.conf This works. The System is now able to reboot unattended. What I consider as a Bug is that grub waits for a key to be pressed. After the specified timeout it should boot in any case. The generated serial and terminal lines make sense if the BIOS does not support serial redirection, but only if unattended boot works.
ticket closed Internal Status set to 'Resolved' Status set to: Closed by Client Resolution set to: 'Rejected' This event sent from IssueTracker by uthomas issue 77240