> I have this problem too. I usually have to ping localhost a few times, > then ping another machine, then the gateway, before I can get a live > network connection going.
Can you try to diagnose this a bit more precisely? Note that it is normal for a Hurd machine not to respond to pings right on boot before anything on the machine has accessed the pfinet server (just like a Linux/Unix machine before `ifconfig' has been run to set up the network). The pfinet server, which is what listens to the Ethernet for IP packets, is a translator set on /servers/socket/2, so it starts up (and will should respond to pings) as soon as anything accesses that node. In a multiuser boot this normally happens the first time when inetd starts up and begins creating AF_INET sockets. Any other program run locally that makes an AF_INET socket will start it up too (i.e. ping or anything else that uses thet network). Can you give us a precise characterization of the situation when you see this network nonresponsiveness? Is this just after boot? Singleuser or multiuser? What else is running or has run? Does the period of nonresponsiveness continue until you do something specifically network-related (the pings you mentioned), or does the situation change just given the passage of time? During a period of nonresponsiveness, what does `ps -A' show?
