serial problems with grub-0.90

[Pragnesh Sampat]

I am using redhat 7.1 (with a newer kernel) on an x86-pc.  Installed
grub in linux partition /boot/grub/*.  The menu.lst is also in the
same directory.  I was able to boot using this config.

This machine does not have a console.  It has one serial port
ttyS0/COM1 which is connected to another x86 linux box with a serial
cable.  I was passing "console=XXX" options to lilo which I did with
GRUB and I am at least where I was with the lilo config.  I can see
the boot messages starting with the "Linux version 2.4.7 ..." etc. and
get a login shell on the. serial line, just like lilo.  So far, so
good.

Can I get the grub menu and boot options in my serial terminal?  I
tried:

    GRUB  version 0.90  (640K lower / 3072K upper memory)

 [ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported.  For the first word, TAB
   lists possible command completions.  Anywhere else TAB lists the possible
   completions of a device/filename. ]

grub> serial --unit=0 --speed=9600

Error 30: Invalid argument

grub> terminal serial Segmentation fault (core dumped)

% gdb grub core
GNU gdb 5.0rh-5 Red Hat Linux 7.1
Copyright 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are
welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions.
Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
There is absolutely no warranty for GDB.  Type "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "i386-redhat-linux"...
Core was generated by `grub'.
Program terminated with signal 11, Segmentation fault.
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libncurses.so.5...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libncurses.so.5
Reading symbols from /lib/i686/libc.so.6...done.
Loaded symbols for /lib/i686/libc.so.6
Reading symbols from /lib/ld-linux.so.2...done.
Loaded symbols for /lib/ld-linux.so.2
#0  0x0804a2a0 in serial_checkkey () at asmstub.c:961
961       FD_SET (serial_fd, &fds);
(gdb) where
#0  0x0804a2a0 in serial_checkkey () at asmstub.c:961
#1  0x08056c7f in terminal_func (arg=0x401abc5d "serial", flags=1) at 
builtins.c:3950
#2  0x0805763d in enter_cmdline (heap=0x401abc54 "terminal serial", forever=1) 
at cmdline.c:168
#3  0x0805328a in cmain () at stage2.c:1046
#4  0x0804a8f5 in init_bios_info () at common.c:345
#5  0x0804972e in doit.2 () at asmstub.c:123
#6  0x08049923 in grub_stage2 () at asmstub.c:179
#7  0x080496e3 in main (argc=1, argv=0xbffffa94) at main.c:238
#8  0x40081177 in __libc_start_main (main=0x80494be <main>, argc=1, 
ubp_av=0xbffffa94, 
    init=0x8048f24 <_init>, fini=0x8059650 <_fini>, rtld_fini=0x4000e184 
<_dl_fini>, 
    stack_end=0xbffffa8c) at ../sysdeps/generic/libc-start.c:129
(gdb) 

Is this supposed to work?  Should I be able to get the grub shell on
my serial connection?  I have not passed any arguments (like
--disable-serial) to the configure script when running it (i. e., just
ran "./configure").

Thanks,

-Pragnesh