In preparation for the (final!) arrival of the APC, I have been setting up a suitable serial console connection, via USB to a UART, and have tested it on the Raspberry Pi..

After remembering (from years ago..) that you have to connect TX to RX – and vice-versa – the serial console worked without a problem, but ‘blanked’ when the Fedora 17 system had finished booting..    Recent versions of Fedora use systemd in place of inittab etc, and this needs to be configured for the appropriate port connection (/dev/ttyAMA0 on the Pi) and the correct baud rate..    Details are in the Fedora wiki – http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Systemd#How_do_I_set_automatic_login_on_a_virtual_console_terminal.3F – and it is (IMHO) rather over-complicated and byzantine, but such is progress!