[TriLUG] DHCP timeout with 10g hardware on rhel family

[Jimmy Dorff]

Hi Folks,

I have some hardware on which the ethernet link takes a little while to 
come up(*). I've noticed that DHCP to this hardware works under:

* NetworkManager
* Anaconda (both newer NM based and older RHEL 5)

But under plain old red hat networking, "/etc/init.d/network" and 
"ifup", it generally times out with the error "failed: no link present. 
Check cable?". I say generally cause sometimes it does work.. it's 
pretty much a race condition.

Clearly, I need to set a delay or change a timeout. I've tried settings 
timeouts in "/etc/dhclient.conf" but they don't seem to have any affect. 
"time ifup eth0" takes 6.1 seconds no matter what I set the timeouts to 
there. I can't seem to find the right place to set this.

* Hardware info:
/etc/modprobe.conf: alias eth0 ixgbe
lspci: 03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82598EB 10-Gigabit 
AT Network Connection (rev 01)
I've set spanning tree to "Port Fast: Yes" on the switch (Dell 8024)  as 
well.

Any suggestions ?

Thanks,
Jimmy Dorff