Hardware: Compaq Proliant 1600
Linux Distro: Suse 9.0

Just installed Suse 9.0. After the first boot I shut the computer down, came back the next day, tried to boot it up and the boot process stopped at "Setting up network interfaces eth0". I rebooted and it hung at the same point, I let it sit there for 8 hours and it never progressed. I was able to boot up by typing "linux single" at the grub window. I set onboot=no in /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-eth0 and it still hangs. The funny thing is I installed Suse 9.0 via FTP. Everything network-wise worked during the install but fails now.

Any advice to fix this would be appriciated.

Check isyour cable undamaged. I had this same problem (well, my Debian only hung up for minutes...), and I fixed it by getting a new, factory made cable to connect my box to hub. (I made a not-so-good-cable by myself, and it only worked as long as one day )

I do not understand how the cable would be the problem if onboot=no is set in ifcfg-eth0, and it still does not boot. Nonetheless I tried another cable to no avail.

Any other ideas out there?

lol i just asked the same thing in the networking forum, and some guy said to try to boot linux single or something... its really frustrating, i think it might be the age of the network card, but who knows?

The frustrating thing is I installed the OS via FTP and now it decides it does not like the network card. I am not a linux guru when it comes to the boot sequence. I thought if I disabled the eth0 on boot the problem would be solved, guess not. Maybe it is time to install another distro.

ok i went and bought another network card, and it stalled at the same point. i then tried it in a different port, with the old card in another port, and then without the card. without the card, the computer boots perfectly and recognizes that the card isnt there and removes the stuff for it. tonight i will try to load my copy of linux to another computer and see if that helps. -tnf

Thanks for the info. Call me stubborn.. I know the card works because I installed the OS via FTP. I think I am going to give slackware a shot tommorow.

ok, i finally cracked and installed linux on my other good P4 2.4 with a newer motherboard. i was never able to get my P1 233 working, but i think it was either the motherboard or the harddrive because using the onboard lan on this other mother board, there are no problems as you can see (i am on it now). how fast is your computer that you are trying to run it on? i know my network card worked on windows also, so that doesnt help much. i also concluded that it had nothing to do with the software that i was installing, because i am using the same stuff now. it must be something to do with pci network cards, but as of now i have no clue what went wrong and what im doing right now. sorry! -tnf

It is a lost cause at this point. I renamed /etc/init.d/network to networkOLD and I was able to boot up. After KDE started my mouse did not work so I thought I would fix that first. I edited XF86config and now X will not start. Going to install Slack tomorrow. I have never had any problems that I could not fix with Slack.

you must have multiple personalities or something.
wtf?

That's funny because I had the exact same problem with install of fedora core 1, I knew my card worked because I use it with Mandrake 9.2, The card configured fine at install, but fedora would no fully boot the first time, it said I removed it and needed to replace it, when I pulled the card it booted but everything said it was messed up because there was no network, I wiped the partition to install SuSE, maybe that will be a mistake. This morning mandrake said the card off and the config program locked up, turned out that the router locked up. It seems that Linux considers a network card dead if it can't see the network, not that the card isn't responding.

Pau

Huh? Troll

I've found the following seems to work in installing LINUX to Proliant 1600's:
Do NOT connect a ps mouse. Use a serial mouse for the install.
Make sure the network cable IS plugged in.
Make a bootup disk as part of the procedure (except for RH Enterprise).
After the initial install, if auto reboot fails, use disk (RH Enterprise use a hard shutdown and restart).
Complete the setup.
Some recommend going into the /dev directory and getting rid of the psaux and the usb set up files. I haven't tried that. We've successfully loaded RH7, RH9, and RHE(es3) versions on our Proliants. We run Compaq 221 Array controllers on ours.

My (limited) experience has been that some NIC's work without complaint under one OS or distro, but just refuse to with others. I had a similar situation with an old Netgear card, which worked fine under Windows but which Linux either didn't like or couldn't find. On the other side of the coin, on another box, the onboard NIC on my mobo works just fine under Linux, but Windows can't cope with it.

At this point I'll bet that you've solved the issue, but my recommendation would be to just try using a different NIC (assuming you've got a spare or don't mind spending about $10 for a new one). -- J.W.