talking to terminal servers

I think I must be missing something here. The TODO list says that  
initcmd will do what I want, but I can't make it work.

The background: I want to talk to a terminal server. The session  
should go something like this:

kremer:~/code/conserver $ telnet my.consoleserver.com 3022
Trying 1.2.3.4...
Connected to my.consoleserver.com.
Escape character is '^]'.

Enter Password:




Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 3 (Taroon Update 5)

--

and now I have a console.

Now when I try this with conserver, I try the following config:

default console { type exec;
  host console;
  initcmd "/opt/test/bin/chat -f /opt/test/etc/chat.cfg";
  exec /usr/bin/telnet -E H P;
  execsubst H=hs,P=Pd;
  portbase 3000;
  portinc 1;
}

console fred   { include console; port 22; }

where chat is built from the conserver distribution and chat.cfg  
looks like

ssword:--ssword: mypass\r

What I'd like to happen is for conserver to connect to the console  
server (via telnet), run the chat script, then give me back the  
console. What actually happens is that initcmd gets run before the  
exec, so the console server crashes :(

How do I handle this? I've read what I can that looks relevant on the  
mailing list archive and others have asked basically the same question

https://www.conserver.com/pipermail/users/2005-January/msg00001.html

but I couldn't see an answer in the archives.

Thanks in advance,

Arthur