Mandrake 10 - "bringing up interface eth0 failed"?

[JTH]

I get the "bringing up interface eth0 FAILED" error as Mandrake 10 is loading on my system. I googled it and found it was to do with networking cards. I have onboard gigabit networking on my Asus P4P800 Deluxe that I'm not using at the mo (I may be using it in the future but through Windows not Linux). I went into the Mandrake Hardware Configuration utility and ran the wizard for my networking card but it hasn't fixed the problem. The computer just hangs for what must be close to a minute during startup while "bringing up interface eth0".

Can anyone help? Disabling the card in Linux if it will help is an option as, like I said, I won't be networking with Linux anyway. I'm dual booting with Windows XP Home on the system detailed in my sig. Thanks for any help!

[peterh]

Do you have a cable plugged into the jack?

If not then that is normal. Until a valid network connection is made that will occur.

[JTH]

No I have no cable plugged into the jack. But the real problem is that because of this it is adding around an extra minute to bootup, pretty tedious. Is there anyway to stop it without having a cable in the jack (none available)?

[kilgoretrout]

There's probably a way to do this through the gui tools but all you really need to do is edit one line of one config file, /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0.

You should see a line that looks like this:

ONBOOT=yes

As you probably already guessed, you should edit the line to:

ONBOOT=no

You need to be root to edit this file. The easy way to bring it up in a graphical editor with root privileges is to open a console and run:

$ su
[enter root password]
# kwrite /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

That will bring up ifcfg-eth0 in kwrite with root privileges. Kwrite works like any ordinary word processor.