Bug#88557: unexpected serial console behavior

[Jamie Heilman]

Package: grub
Version: 0.5.96.1-0.1

In my menu.lst file I set:

serial --speed=115200
terminal serial

I expected this to display the menu on ttyS0 upon booting however rather
than immediately display the menu it keeps asking for a key press.  It
doesn't timeout either.  This seems rather counter intuitive as the
documentation says that it will use the terminal on which the first key
press is given, when the config specifies both 'serial' and 'console', but
if I list serial as the only terminal directive, why wait for a key press?
The work around is to specify '--timeout=0' to the terminal directive, but
I don't think that should be necessary in this case.  Case in point, it
doesn't do this if you don't have a serial console and you only have a VGA
console, then it immediately displays the menu on the VGA console.

The other thing I ran into which I'm appending here, very well may be a bug
specific to my motherboard (which is of somewhat questionable breeding),
and that is even with my BIOS settings done properly GRUB won't boot unless
I have a keyboard plugged in.  The only reason I append this here is hoping
you can give it a quick test and let me know if its just my lame-ass mobo.
I thought it worked with LILO, but its been a while since I tried to set
this computer up without a console.

-- 
Jamie Heilman                   http://audible.transient.net/~jamie/
"It's almost impossible to overestimate the unimportance of most things."
                                                        -John Logue