RHEL5 Kickstart and serial console

[Larry Brigman]

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 3:36 AM, Adam Goodall <agoodall at rm.com> wrote:
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: kickstart-list-bounces at redhat.com
> [mailto:kickstart-list-bounces at redhat.com] On Behalf Of Ben
>>Sent: 13 October 2009 10:03
>>To: Discussion list about Kickstart
>>Subject: Re: RHEL5 Kickstart and serial console
>
>>Well, the above lines have worked for me on RHEL5.x up to current for
> 32 and
>>64 bit on over 80 assorted machines (with only one serial port).
> Perhaps if there's no ttyS1 on your boxes (being discovered as ttyS0)
> then the install >isn't adding the necessary lines.
>
>>Just a guess.
>
> Thanks for the response Ben, I didn't think that the method would have
> changed racically. On closer inspection it isn't actually fully setting
> up the grub.conf in that it doesn't add the hiddenmenu option.
>
> Its definitely not the numbering of the serial port as once the server
> has booted I can add:
> co:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS1 19200 vt100-nav
> To inittab, then run init q and the serial console comes back to life.
>
> Still a little stumped as to what it could be.


In 5.1 thru 5.3 I have needed to add the following to my %post section
to achieve what you
are looking to do.  I have kept this option in the 5.4 installs as I
haven't seen any problems.

 # modify inittab to add serial console login
cat >>/etc/inittab <<EOF
#serial console login enabled
co:2345:respawn:/sbin/agetty ttyS0 115200 vt100-nav
EOF

Changing the grub config to have hidden menu and other options like
grub serial console
had to be done in the post section also by sed.

# modify grub for serial console
sed -i -e 's/^timeout=5/serial --unit=0 --speed=115200 --word=8
--parity=no --stop=1 \
terminal --timeout=5 serial console \
timeout=5/' \
 -e 's/^splashimage/#&/' /boot/grub/grub.conf

Note that there is a bug in grub that prevents serial console output
when the splashimage
option is being used.