serial console on feisty server

[Carl Alexander]

I'm trying to get a serial console on a 7.04 server machine.  I'm
starting from a clean install from the ubuntu-7.04-server-i386 CD.

I'm fairly sure the kernel is configured for a serial console out
of the box --- or at least, I don't know why else this would mean:
    ~$ grep -i serial /boot/config-2.6.20-15-server | grep -i console
    CONFIG_SERIAL_8250_CONSOLE=y
    CONFIG_SERIAL_CORE_CONSOLE=y

I used the http://www.howtoforge.com/setting_up_a_serial_console
serial console howto, up until it said to edit /etc/inittab and
I discovered that I had none.  A little googling on this led me
to discover upstart, and per 
http://blog.mypapit.net/2007/03/where-can-i-find-inittab-in-ubuntu-edgy-eft-or-feisty-fawn.html
I edited /etc/event.d/tty1 and tty2 instead of /etc/inittab.

The net result of which is:

in  /boot/grub/menu.lst, I inserted

serial --unit=0 --speed=9600 --word=8 --parity=no --stop=1   
terminal --timeout=10 serial console

and appended 

console=tty0 console=ttyS0,9600n8

to the kernel line in each kernel stanza.

And in /etc/event.d/tty1 and tty2 I changed 38400 to 9600. 

Then I re-booted the machine, which produced the following output
to the serial console (this is from a conserver log; those of you
familiar with conserver will recognize that I've cleaned up some
line noise; I've also split up one long line using the usual backslash
convention):

Press any key to continue.
Press any key to continue.
Press any key to continue.
Press any key to continue.
Press any key to continue.
Press any key to continue.
Press `ESC' to enter the menu... 2   
Press `ESC' to enter the menu... 1   
Press `ESC' to enter the menu... 0
Starting up ...
Loading, please wait...
kinit: name_to_dev_t(/dev/mapper/uma-swap_1) = dm-1(254,1)
kinit: trying to resume from /dev/mapper/uma-swap_1
kinit: No resume image, doing normal boot...
 * Setting preliminary keymap...       [ OK ]
 * Starting basic networking...       [ OK ]
 * Starting kernel event manager...       [ OK ]
 * Loading hardware drivers...      [   61.018584] EDAC e7xxx: error \
    reporting device not found:vendor 8086 device 0x2541 (broken BIOS?)
[   61.172650] intel_rng: FWH not detected       [ OK ]
 * Loading kernel modules...       * Loading manual drivers...       [ OK ]
 * Checking root file system...      fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
/dev/mapper/uma-root: clean, 25729/121372672 files, 3963750/242715648 blocks       [ OK ]
 * Setting up LVM Volume Groups...       [ OK ]
 * Checking file systems...      fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
/dev/sda1: clean, 31/62248 files, 24467/248976 blocks       [ OK ]
 * Mounting local filesystems...       [ OK ]
 * Activating swapfile swap...       [ OK ]
 * Configuring network interfaces...       [ OK ]
 * Starting system log daemon...       [ OK ]
 * Starting kernel log...       [ OK ]
 * Starting OpenBSD Secure Shell server...       [ OK ]
 * Starting deferred execution scheduler atd       [ OK ]
 * Starting periodic command scheduler crond       [ OK ]
 * Running local boot scripts (/etc/rc.local)       [ OK ]

That to me like grub output, followed by boot messages from the
kernel, followed by nothing at all --- in particular, a nothing
notable for the absence of the expected login prompt.

I'd really appreciate any clues as to what's going on here.

Thanks in advance!

---Alex