Kyle,

That worked for my Dell PE 860 as well. I didn't get the press any key,
instead Grub showed the Perfigo kernel and continued rebooting within
the next 5 seconds without user intervention!

Thanks, Howard 

-----Original Message-----
From: Cisco Clean Access Users and Administrators
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Kyle Evans
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2007 16:17
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Grub problems WAS: Installing v4.1.1 iso image on Dell 1850
fails after install with kernel panic

Hi all,


I have found a solution that will work for our environment.  All I did
was remove the following two lines from /etc/grub.conf

serial --unit=0 --speed=9600
terminal --timeout=5 serial console


According to this web page:

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Remote-Serial-Console-HOWTO/configure-boot-loader-
grub.html

The way grub is supposed to work with both a serial connection and
monitor connection is that it prints "Press any key to continue." for
the 5 seconds specified with --timeout=5 in the terminal command.  This
is to figure out whether or not the user is on the serial connection or
the monitor.  If no key is pressed, grub prints the the menu on
whichever interface is specified first in the terminal command (the
serial connection in this case).  Then after the menu is displayed, grub
waits for the 5 seconds specified in timeout=5 in grub.conf.  In short,
if no keys are pressed, then grub should boot something after 10 seconds
total.  However, there is obviously some issue with this in CCA 4.1.1
and Dell PE 750s and 860s that causes it to wait much longer.  The weird
thing is that CCA 4.0.3.1 uses the same version of grub and the same
grub.conf, but it has no issues like this.

Taking these lines out actually worried me because I use the serial port
to manage CCA in some cases.  However, if I have console redirection on
and redirection after boot enabled in the bios, then I still get the
grub menu on both the serial connection and monitor, and I'm also able
to login on both.  I imagine this would cause problems in an environment
that uses the serial port for HA, though.  I bet that is why the
supported hardware document says to disable those options in the bios
anyway.


Kyle