> 3 When starting up (Mandrake) the startup hangs on "bringing up > interface ethos" - spends time looking or doing whatever its doing and > eventually "fails". Is there anything that is able to be done not to > have to sit through this each time?
It spends time doing apparently nothing because it is looking for a DHCP server to give in address information. If this is just a home PC then there is no chance you have a DHCP server and hence the network device should have either been set to not start at boot time or to have a static IP. The best idea, to my mind, would be to not start this device on boot. In a Mandrake system I believe you would modify /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 so that "ONBOOT=no". If you must start your ethernet device at boot time, give it a static address so that it starts up quicky:
