jonathan@DSG.Stanford.EDU said:
> It's 100% appropriate for console(4) to point to boot_console(4). 

Agreed, it is somewhat renundant however since console(4)
points to boot(8) which in turn points to boot_console(8).
(Note the section 8!)
You were asking about adding a link to boot_console(4)
to GENERIC. This is what my "inappropriate" refers to.

> My real problem is that
> biosboot_com0 simply does not work as advertised, and I'm trying to
> figure out how I can get serial consoles to work _AT ALL_ on a current
> i386 server motherboard.

I have a guess at least: If your BIOS redirects the graphics console
output to a serial line, it makes this serial port unavailable
to serial port related BIOS calls (ie INT14) and clears the
corresponding BIOS variables. The bootcode has no way to find
out that it gets fooled, and also doesn't know how to get the
serial port settings. There is not much we can do without docs.
A workaround would be to let the bootblocks believe in a graphics
console and use the kernel override machanism.

best regards
Matthias