running rhel3 - set up to run dhcp

on bootup, eth0 fails to start, says cable unplugged. running service network start fails also. When i run dhclient, everything comes up great. Running service network restart also fails.

question is how is dhclient different than what happens when I try to restart the service or on boot?

I cant see anything useful in the messages file either...

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[root@vmlinux1 tmp]# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
# Advanced Micro Devices [AMD]|79c970 [PCnet32 LANCE]
DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
HWADDR=00:0C:29E:71:6F
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Ethernet
[root@vmlinux1 tmp]#

[root@vmlinux1 tmp]# cat service_network_restart
Shutting down interface eth0: [ OK ]
Shutting down loopback interface: [ OK ]
Setting network parameters: [ OK ]
Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ]
Bringing up interface eth0:
Determining IP information for eth0... failed; no link present. Check cable?
[FAILED]
******************after running dhclient****************
[root@vmlinux1 tmp]# ifconfig eth0
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:29E:71:6F
inet addr:192.168.0.103 Bcast:192.168.255.255 Mask:255.255.0.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1185 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:788 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:257010 (250.9 Kb) TX bytes:67878 (66.2 Kb)
Interrupt:10 Base address:0x1400

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thanks for the help!

shaun

We recently got a couple of new servers at work that had the same problem.
It turns out the problem ( at least for us ) was that the NIC was taking a really long time to
recognize the network after being restarted ( no Idea why, hardware issue maybe...).
The solution we came up with was to increase the wait time between looking for the network.

to do edit ( in FC3 at least) edit
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/network-functions

in the check_link_down() function either increase the usleep time by a factor of 10, or the the number of cycles by 10.

hth
Niels