Description of problem: when "terminal serial" is added to grub.conf even if it doesn't include another terminal, grub starts printing messages on the serial console, asking for a key in order to select the corresponding terminal. when terminal has only one option that makes no sense, as there is only one possible terminal to be selected and the poll is not needed. this problem was fixed on the CVS version for grub as shown on : http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?func=detailbug&bug_id=568&group_id=68 sadly that patch is not applied on the current CVS version and as the code was heavily changed it is no longer accurate
Is this better in grub 0.93 as shipped in Red Hat Linux 9 (a comparable version that should work on 7.3 is available at http://people.redhat.com/~katzj/grub/grub-0.93-1.as.i386.rpm)
sorry katz, the RH7.3 server i was using to test on is no longer available, but i just upgraded my desktop from 8.0 to 9.0 and even if the same problem was found on the 8.0 version of grub the 9.0 version is working ok. when only using "serial" as a terminal parameter, the polling is not done and goes directly to the serial console. couldn't test what is the result if there are two different terminals and none of those is serial (console and graphics) though.