Bug#506707: grub-pc: regression: no longer able to specify both vga and serial console

[Miquel van Smoorenburg]

Package: grub-pc
Version: 1.96+20080724-12
Severity: normal

I just upgraded one of our servers to grub-pc, to see what the new
grub is going to be like.

First of all, the kernel command line options were migrated
wrong (it only copied the first option and ignored the rest).
But that's not the subject of this bugreport.

All of our servers have a serial console connection so that we
can manage them remotely. Our supermicro servers also have
a bios that supports serial connections.

However sometimes you need to boot a machine while standing next
to it, with a screen and keyboard  connected.

For that we always used the following grub setting in menu.lst:

  # Set serial to ttyS0,9600 and use both serial and vga console.
  serial --unit=0 --speed=9600 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1
  terminal serial console

It appear that with the new setup using /etc/default/grub there
is no way to specify terminal serial AND terminal console.
It's one of them, but not both.

I think that for many servers like ours this is a serious
regression of functionality.

I hacked around it by putting the serial config in
/etc/grub.d/02_somefile , but it would be nice if this could
be fixed properly. I'd like to be able to use:

GRUB_SERIAL_COMMAND="serial --unit=0 --speed=9600"
GRUB_TERMINAL="serial console"

Mike.