DHCP and booting problems...

Newbie123 · n00b Joined: 09 Jun 2002 Posts: 43

I just finished installing gentoo. I am connected to the internet via NAT through a DHCP server on my lan.

All of the other clients on the network are windows machines, and selecting 'Select an IP address automatically' correctly configures them for DHCP. Once they boot up, they work fine.

The server is running an older version of linux mandrake 7 or 8 I think.

My computer is running gentoo. The problem is, if I configure it so that it checks DHCP for boot, it always fails after waiting for about 2 or 3 minutes before finishing booting. I have edited net.eth0 such that $iface='dhcp' (don't remember exact syntax) and I have run 'rc-update add net.eth0 default'.

The strange thing is, the following works from the console.

root> dhcpd eth0
*** wait about 30-60 seconds while the program seems to hang, then CTRL-C ***
root> dhcpd eth0
*** It finishes immediately, and my internet connection works ***

If I just run 'dhcpd eth0' once from the console, it will run for 2 or 3 minutes, and then fail, just like bootup - yet the abovemention method works.

This is really frustrating for me, and I have no idea what to do. When I am at college, with a set IP, my internet connection is established by the time I am done booting, but not at home with DHCP.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Do you guys think this might be a server problem, even though none of the windows machines have any problems?

Thanks alot for your help.

error26 · n00b Joined: 22 Feb 2003 Posts: 65 Location: Vienna

i have this problem too

ARC2300 · Apprentice Joined: 30 Mar 2003 Posts: 267

THis may be pointless, but have you tried to update your DHCP software?? I have no problems whatsoever.

Also, have you tried giving out a fixed address to that machine via DHCP to see if that works??? When you Gentoo is connected, does the connection seem really, really slow???

Or even restarting the DHCP daemon on your Mandrake computer?

DefconAlpha · Posted: Mon May 19, 2003 7:09 pm Post subject: NIC refuse DHCP

I have a similar problem with a few NIC's on my work campus. Something happened to a few machines (read lightning... or "something") and one of them would *not* pull an IP from the router. Pulled the NIC and replaced it with a different one, and presto! works just fine... For shits-and-giggles i put the NIC that wouldn't pull DHCP and put it in a Gentoo backup server i am making (right now actually... damn slow bootstrapping). dhcpcd eth0 would never work; it would just time out after a few minutes. If i statically assigned an IP to the card it worked just fine...

So moral of the story is borrow (or steal, whatever...) another NIC and see if you can pull an IP through DHCP. That would at least narrow it down to drivers (not likely) or hardware (more probable). If that router has a static IP (probably does, since it is the router) you could always use the NIC that won't pull an IP in the router :)
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