I just installed RH 5.3 on two PowerEdge R610's and both are not getting on the network for some reason. In the past I would do a mii-tool to see the link status and this is showing no link even though there is a link light on the back of the server. I've checked all 4 connections just to make sure something isn't out of order. Tried using ethtool to hardcode it to a speed of 1000 and yet I still can't ping my default gw. I can use my laptop and plug into that cable and ping the default gw so I know the network portion is good. Never had this problem on any other dell server anybody have some clues or direction.

Thanks,
Bruce

Figured it out. I had to edit the /etc/sysconfig/hwconf file and remove all my eth* entries and then remove my /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth* files and reboot. For some reason the initial install detected these incorrectly. I have 4 NIC's but the install was installing 8, 4 of them being some intel network card and 4 being my broadcom netxtreme's after the reboot and reconfig of my eth0's i'm on the network and working.

Maybe a dumb reply ... but isn't redhat 5(.3?) a _bit_ outdated? You can be considered lucky for having support for your NICs in that ancient 2.4.?? kernel ...

If you were talking about CentOS or Redhat _Enterprise_, forgive me ...

Actually AS 5.3

Just installed RHEL 5.5 on a brand new Dell R610 and had the exact same problem. Googling brought me here and the fix described above worked for me too.