We use the CentOS distribution to host our software. For the past 5 years (CentOS 4.3 to CentOS 6.0) we have executed an init script upon startup that runs either "netconfig" or "system-config-network." These curses-based programs allow our users to set their IP address w/out having to log onto the system.

Upon updating our rpms to CentOS 6.2, these programs are no longer responding to keyboard input. Nothing else has changed other than the rpm update.

By the way, we pass the following arguments to the kernel via our grub.conf file: "LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us crashkernel=auto crashkernel=auto rhgb quiet console=ttyS0,9600n8 console=tty0". Until the kernel begins to boot, one can edit grub.conf file, enter single user mode, and all the other normal boot/BIOS operations. After the system boots and the console displays the logon prompt, terminal and keyboard input is fine.

Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

I basically had this exact same problem with installing CentOS 6.2. I created a USB stick with CentOS 6.2 and used a kickstart
script to automatically configure everything. At the end of the install, it adds a service script that calls system-config-network
during the first boot up, after it runs the first time, the script does a chkconfig off on the service so it never runs again.

This ran fine with CentOS 5.x but when I updated the stick to handle CentOS 6.2, I couldn't get keyboard input during the boot process.
So the system-config-network popup didn't work well.

So the trick I finally found that worked was to turn off the plymouth splash ..... by issue a "/usr/bin/plymouth quit" in my
service/script that calls system-config-network.

In the post section of my kickstart config file I also added the following:

#remove the centos 6.2 progress bar during bootup
sed -i "s/rhgb//g" /boot/grub/grub.conf
sed -i "s/quiet//g" /boot/grub/grub.conf

# Disable the plymouth boot splash since it interferes with
# the /usr/sbin/system-config-network-tui
plymouth-set-default-theme details --rebuild-initrd

But these two tricks still didn't work, the secret was the "/usr/bin/plymouth quit" command

Your solution worked. I called /bin/plymouth quit just before calling system-config-network...

Thank you vpen!