qemu virsh serial console stuck at 80x25
 

Any suggestions on how to get my vm guest serial console to be the same size as the xterm I login from would be appreciated. Details below. Thanks in advance.

I have a Debian 6 x86_64 host running a Debian 6 i686 guest created using virt-install. All is working fine except the serial console. It seems to be stuck at vt100/80column/25line/noscroll. I created/used many vm guests with vnc console before. This is my first time using a serial console.

After the guest is booted, I login to the guest as root using the guest console with "virsh console testvm" from an "xterm -g 99x66 -sl 10000 -sb" on the host. Commands like "ps -elf" are cut off at 80 columns but will using all 66 lines. Commands like "ps -elf | grep ." will using all 99 columns. Curses based applications such as vim do some type of term reset and only use 80x25.

/etc/inittab:
T0:23:respawn:/sbin/getty -L ttyS0 38400 linux

/etc/default/grub:
GRUB_SERIAL_COMMAND=serial
GRUB_TERMINAL_INPUT=serial
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT=serial
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="console=ttyS0,38400"

testvm% stty -a >> rows=0,columns=0
testvm (bash)% set >> LINES=24 COLUMNS=80 TERM=linux

If I manually set LINES/COLUMNS and export them, still no change.
Same results with csh.
Same results at the grub prompt (help uses 80x66, but menu uses 80x25).
Same results with i686 host and x86_64 guest (all debian 6).