Activating eth0 causes problems/delays in login... Why? And how to remediate?
 

Well, everything is already said in the subject field. I successfully installed an ethernet card, hooked my workstation to a LAN's firewall. But as soon as eth0 is activated, the login procedure is either dramatically delayed (when performed from the current X session) or simply fails (when performed from consoles). Conversely, the behaviour of the login procedure goes back to normal as soon as eth0 is deactivated.

Does anyone have any idea why? and how to remediate?

Many thanks in advance.

Eric

You'll need to be a little more specific.

1. Give us more info concerning your system (CPU type, model of NIC, distro and version of Linux, how do you connect to the outside world, etc.).
2. Are you using a static IP, or are you getting your IP via DHCP? (it sounds like a DHCP issue).
3) If DHCP, are you using pump, or dhcpcd?
4) Reserved for later questions; depends on the answers to 1-3.
;)

hmm
 

I had the same issue when I changed the hostname under network config. It took up to 5 mins to boot completely!

All seemed well when I finally changed the name back (took me a while to think of that plan). Hopefully, this can be of help to you.

[DMR] Let me be a little more specific
 

First of all, thx a lot to both of you for replying so promptly :)

[DMR] Here is more detail about my system
CPU: PIII i686 1GHz
NIC: Netgear something (it works perfectly fine, i can http, ssh, etc.)
Distro/Linux: Redhat 7.1 / 2.4.9-12
Static IP: 192.168.0.181

[wushu3d] I also have recently change the name of my host from the initial 'localhost.localdomain' to something more original, which i would not mind keeping :-)

Could my problem be related to pam.d or ipchains? My intuition is that the fact that the network/eth0 is enabled results in a change in the way password check is operated. There must be a configuration file somewhere, which i am not aware of, to indicate that password check remains local to the host...

--
Eric

This is often a sendmail problem. Try this: Disable sendmail startup and see if the boot proceeds normally. If so, sendmail is attepting to verify the DNS addy of the box's name by going to the default DNS servers. If the name won't look up, there is a long hang before sendmail gives up and allows the boot to proceed. This is only apparent when there is a network connection, as sendmail "knows" about that, and skips the lookup when not networked. Often seen after assigning some random name to the box.