I have found the answer at http://www.vmware.com/support/guestnotes/doc/guestos_redhat90.html. The card wrongly reports that the link is down. I tried the work around published in the link above and my card now gets an IP address. The relevant portion from the link is pasted below: - - - - - - - Getting a DHCP Address in a Red Hat Linux 9.0 Virtual Machine When a Red Hat Linux 9.0 guest operating system tries to get a DHCP address, the attempt may fail with an error message that states the link is down. On ESX Server, this happens only if you are using the vlance driver for your network connection. To work around this problem, become root (su -) and use a text editor to edit the following files in the guest operating system. If only one of these files exist, make the change for that file only. /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth[n] /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-eth[n] In both cases, [n] is the number of the Ethernet adapter - for example, eth0. Add the following section to each of these two files: check_link_down () { return 1; } Then run the command ifup eth[n] (where [n] is the number of the Ethernet adapter) or restart the guest operating system. - - - - - - - As usual, I spent several days looking for the answer without success. The minute I asked on a newsgroup, the answer pops up. Hopefully this can help someone else with a similar problem. Ben Guevremont ----- Original Message ----- >From: Ben >To: fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx >Sent: Tuesday, December 16, 2003 6:50 PM >Subject: DHCP client does not work in Fedora > > >I ugraded from RedHat9.0 to Fedora Core 1.0 on my server. My 3C905B network card will no longer get a dynamic IP (it worked fine in RedHat 9.0 as well as >all the previous versions of Redhat I used before). I get the following error message : "Failed, no link, check cable". When I setup a static address on the same >card, it works fine. I tried re-installing Fedora from scratch (not upgrade) on the same computer with same NIC without success (still no dynamic IP address - >same error message). I installed Fedora on a different box with the same NIC (3C905B) and the DHCP client works properly. > >What would cause the DHCP client to think that there is no link on my card? The cable tests OK, there is link lights on the NIC and the switch, it works fine with >static IP, and it works fine on another computer. What gives? > >Ben
