Red Hat Knowledgebase

When using a static IP network configuration, it is possible that the network driver may take longer to activate the link than the ifup script takes to complete during the boot sequence. (DHCP is not affected since it requires the link to be active to retrieve the network parameters.)

As a result of this delay, during the system bootup any network shares mounted just after the network interface startup may fail with "No route to host" because the link is not yet active.

To allow some time for the interface to activate, use the parameter LINKDELAY, expressed in seconds, in the appropriate interface configuration file.

For example, if /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 contained:

DEVICE=eth0
ONBOOT=yes
BOOTPROTO=none
LINKDELAY=30
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
IPADDR=192.168.0.12
GATEWAY=192.168.0.254
TYPE=Ethernet

NOTE: The LINKDELAY parameter was only introduced in newer versions of the initscripts package. On Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, the initscript package needs to be version 7.93.25 or later (see RHBA-2006:0396-3 for more information). All releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and newer should contain the parameter.

For earlier versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux it is possible to manually edit the ifup script to achieve the same functionality. Please see the related solution below for more details.