Hi all,

I just installed RHEL 4 on a gateway laptop. It is hanging when trying to initialize the network hardware on boot up. The system configuration is as follows:

Gateway M465-G Laptop
Intel® Core® Duo Processor T2300 (1.66GHz, 667MHz FSB, 2MB L2 Cache),
60GB 5400rpm Serial ATA hard drive
Radeon® X1400 SE 64MB Graphics (up to 128MB HyperMemory),
945GM Chipset,
2048MB 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM (2-1024MB modules),
8x Multi-Format Double Layer DVD Writer (DVD®R/®RW/CD-RW),
Integrated Intel® 802.11a/b/g wireless networking,
Intregrated 10/100/1000

I am plugged into the corporate network which accepted a DHCP session with this machine when XP was running.

I set eth0 in the setup to use DHCP. I never set anything for eth1 (wireless).

It finally boots up and the network works fine. When I shutdown the computer, I saw an error on the sound device.

Thanks,

Dan

If your seeing the message Initializing Hardware... storage network then the problem is not with the network interface but your un-listed audio/sound interface. The fact that you are seeing storage and network means they have been started and the system is trying to start the audio/sound interface (the long pause).

Either edit the /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit file and remove the audio startup or configure the audio/sound interface correctly.

Hint: lspci -v

http://www.alsa-project.org/

Your audio/sound interface may not be supported with the pre-built kernel package(s) try the CentOS plus kernel(s) or build your own.

http://isoredirect.centos.org/centos/4.4/centosplus/

CentOS4 is a 100% binary compatible clone of RHEL4 BTW.