Description of problem: The "better" boot configuration doesn't properly handle the serial console case. If connecting via serial console, it's impossible to change which kernel boots, making recovery impossible if a kernel update goes bad. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): grub-0.97-36.fc10.x86_64 How reproducible: 100% Steps to Reproduce: 1. Install a system (or KVM guest) with console=ttyS0 at the boot prompt. 2. Boot the system, connecting via the serial console. 3. Hold down a key to enter the grub menu. Actual results: Anaconda automatically configures grub to display via the serial console, but it's impossible to enter the grub menu via the serial console. Expected results: Some mechanism to enter the grub menu via serial console. Additional info: Using "timeout=5" allows grub to be accessed over serial. Since Anaconda already has logic to automatically configure grub.conf to display via a serial console when the installer is booted with console=ttyS0, it should be trivial to augment that logic to insert the old style timeout configuration as well when a serial console is used for grub.
What version of booty was in the tree you installed with? booty-0.105-1 should include a fix for this (changing the timeout if we set up a serial console)
I installed from the F10 Preview ISO, which appears to have that version of booty. It's setting up chaintimeout=5, but that doesn't help since the system isn't configured to chainload.
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 10 development cycle. Changing version to '10'. More information and reason for this action is here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping
We changed this around before Fedora 10 and it should be acting a lot more like you'd expect now