I managed to do a serial console install of RH7 on a system without video adapter and keyboard. I like to share my experience and report some problems. In order to do a serial install you need to add an extra command to the boot command. Instead of starting the installation process with 'text' on the bootprompt, with a serial console installed on the first serial port you need to type 'text serial=ttyS0'. But....... in this case I didn't have a bootprompt on the serial line while I didn't tell the system yet I wanted to do a serial line installation. And if I had a normal console to type the command I didn't have a need to do a serial line installation. I found a solution in modifying the bootdisk on a different system. In the file 'syslinux.cfg' I changed the line reading "append initrd=initrd.img text" to "append initrd=initrd.img text serial=ttyS0" and the line "default linux" to "default text". In this way the installation starts on the serial line by default. The actual installation process works exactly the same as a text installation on a normal video console. No problems. After the installation process I ran into another problem. Linux installs virtual terminals on the video console by default (mingetty). However it does not install a getty process on any serial line by default. So after the installation process I had a perfectly working system (I presume). I wasn't able to reach it though. This is a real problem. For this one I haven't found a solution so far. People from RedHat can you solve this problem. Can you make the installation process that intelligent, that if it knows it is doing an installation over a serial line, a getty-process is installed on that serial line. In general make the installation process install a getty on the installation line, wether it is the console or any other line. Koos.
Assigned to a QA engineer to reproduce.
your observations are correct! 1) for serial installs without a video adapter, the default redhat boot disk will not work (you have to modify the syslinux cfg file like you did!) 2) /etc/inittab does not have support for a getty from the serial console We have added these requests to our feature request list ... thanks for your report!
additionally, as a workaround for now, you may manually add getty support for the serial console in /etc/inittab in two ways: 1) perform a kickstart instllation, and in the %post section list the commands necessary to add the serial mgetty line 2) temporarily add a video adapter to the machine, perform an install as usual, modify the /etc/inittab to add the serial mgetty line, then remove the video adapter I hope this helps you in your current situation!