Okay, I've gone through at least a dozen other threads where people have the same problem and don't seem to get it resolved. When I boot in RH9 and it tries to start up the eth0 interface, the following message comes:

"Determining IP information for eth0... failed"

It's not the firewall, because I definitely disabled it, and in any case, I got a diffrerent message about iptables ("No chain/target/match by that name failed") when trying to use the firewall. BTW, I got the exact same messages for each one above when I tried to activate eth0 in X System Settings >> Network.

I know its not the NIC or its detection because its listed in lsmod:

...
tulip 42840 0
...

and it's listed in lspci:

...
00:11.0 Ethernet controller: Asix Electronics Corp ALFA GFC2204 (rev03)
...

And please don't tell me tulip sucks because every other thread seems to say, "Well, those old Random Co. cards always did have crappy drivers." And yet those cards in the other threads worked in other RH versions.

Let's see, what else can I say... I've got DHCP being served off my router/DSL modem, which works fine for all our Windows machines. I've gotten DHCP enabled through setup and redhat-config-network and neat and X System Settings > Network > Device Properties (eth0), so there's no way that it's not clear to RH that I want DHCP. I've tried running dhclient and making a dhclient.conf file which, really, I should not even have to do... I mean, DHCP should just work, after all it's been enabled, right? Plus it looks like eth0 is trying broadcasts looking for a DHCP server. This is what part of ifconfig says:

eth0 Link: encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:80:AD:40:B2:3B
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
...

and some other non-interesting stuff (hey, I'm copying by sight from Windows here ). Anyway, I figure the DHCP server in my router must be sufficient if my Windows machines are okay.

So please, I've been reading threads and trying things and rebooting all day... is there anyone with a solution? It would be much appreciated. If there's anything you need to know, btw, go ahead and ask, I'll be on this thread very frequently.

Oh, and yes I checked the connections... I'm making the daring assumption here that if I can't pull the cable from the card and the router, and the little LEDs are lit on the card and the router, that it must be connected properly. If I'm wrong, let me know.

(Sorry for being a smart-ass... it's soooooo late.)

Ummmm make sure your NIC is not having a interupt problem
if that checks out why not try making a static IP for testing then try pinging the other P/C's thats all I got

Try to use another dhcp client

Alright, I got the problem fixed a couple of weeks ago... I'm posting a followu-up so that if anyone has the same problem (and someone will) they will know what to do. It wasn't an interrupt problem or a DHCP client problem. All I did was switch out the Ethernet card from one no-name brand to another. Even though this should make no real difference, it did. I'm guessing the original's module or driver (Tulip-compatible) wasn't right for it or just wasn't written correctly. This other card uses a driver -- DEC something or other. Point is -- if you have the exact problem I started with, switch out the cards! Do it until something works. These things are too cheap ($10? I stole mine from a friend...) to waste *days* poring over Ethereal dumps and messing with DHCP server BS. Best of luck to all you out there!

In my case another dhcp client is get more cheaper