network installation ( dhcp problem)

[Ray Van Dolson]

Anaconda still uses 'pump', which I definitely believe has some bugs.  There
are situations where dhclient works fine, but pump fails on our network.

What type of switch are you plugging into (if any)?  Might it have Spanning
Tree enabled on the port?  This can cause a delay before the port comes up,
and DHCP clients can time out before the port is truly active.

You can either, disable Spanning Tree, turn on Port Fast mode or try using the
"nicdelay=XX" boot parameter where XX is a value in seconds that will "pause"
hopefully giving you extra seconds to wait while Spanning Tree calcuations are
being done.

Easy way to test if this is the problem is to plug your Ethernet cable that
normally would run from your switch to your computer into a hub or "dumb"
(unmanaged switch), and then go from that hub/switch to your computer.  If
spanning tree is to blame, you should get a DHCP IP without problem.

Disregard if you're not in an environment where you're using managed switches
at all. :)

Ray