I have some i386 boxes with serial console which I don't want to leave
connected all the time, for various reasons.  Things work well for the most
part, but if I get something that logs a great deal to the console,
and the serial port isn't connected, syslog will hang, as will every
process which tries to write to it, until I get a console connected
again.  

I assume that flow control is what's causing this.  Is there any way
to affect this behaviour short of recompiling the kernel?  If
recompiling is the only way, what exactly is the correct setting
I should use?

thanks,
+j

-- 
Jeff Rizzo                                         http://boogers.sf.ca.us/~riz