# DHCPCD times out waiting for a response.

## nonhuman

I just installed Gentoo 1.4 rc1 with the 2.5.40 kernel.  For some reason whenever it tries to get an address from the DHCP server the connection times out.  My first thought was that it had my two NICs mixed up, or that I had the wrong drivers for the one I was tyring to use, but the same thing occurs with both NICs.  They'll both work on my LAN with a static IP, but not on the cable modem with DHCP.  I also tried recompiling the kernel with a few more options installed, but nothing that I could think has fixed it.

When running under RedHat 8, it works just fine.  All I can think of is that it must be a problem with the way DHCP is configured under Gentoo, but I don't know enough about it to just start mucking around.  Can anyone help me out?

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## obsidian

Hi,

could just as well be that your kernel does the broadcasting or whatever different from the way dhcpd expects. The unstable 2.5 series is definitely interesting, but I'd recommend trying 2.4. Maybe that fixes your problem.

Cheers,

Kevin

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## nonhuman

The problem with using the 2.4 kernel is that, for some reason, I can't get it to compile with USB HID support, and my motherboard is a no-legacy ABIT AT7.

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## pjp

How is your /etc/conf.d/net file configured?

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## nonhuman

It's basically just: 

```
iface_eth0="dhcp"
```

 As far as I know there's no options that need to be passed.  When booting off the install cd I just do "dhcpcd eth0" and it works.

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## pjp

Is dhcpd is running?

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## nonhuman

Nope, dhcpd is not running.

I also installed pump, and that doesn't work either.  I tried recompiling the kernel again with less extraneous options and made sure that I have everything that I can think of that would possibly be related to making DHCP work, and I'm still having the same problem.

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## pilla

You can increase timeout with -t option

I had similar problems when using dhcp under WinXP and then booting under Gentoo. RH 7.3 worked well.  It uses -d as an option for pump .

 *nonhuman wrote:*   

> Nope, dhcpd is not running.
> 
> I also installed pump, and that doesn't work either.  I tried recompiling the kernel again with less extraneous options and made sure that I have everything that I can think of that would possibly be related to making DHCP work, and I'm still having the same problem.

 

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## nonhuman

I gave dhcpcd a timeout of 120, and now it works!  Thanks!

Just to make sure, if I want to have it use a timeout of 120 at startup I add to the /etc/conf.d/net: 

```
dhcpcd_eth1="-t 120"
```

 right?

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## nonhuman

It seems the DHCP problem was just indicitive of a broader problem.  For some reason all networking under Gentoo is incredibly slow.  It will sometimes take long enough to resolve a hostname that the connection will time out.

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## pilla

If you are using eth1, correct. 

Take a look at you resolv.conf  before and after getting the IP.

Verify also if you don t have resource conflicts (like IRQs). 

 *nonhuman wrote:*   

> I gave dhcpcd a timeout of 120, and now it works!  Thanks!
> 
> Just to make sure, if I want to have it use a timeout of 120 at startup I add to the /etc/conf.d/net: 
> 
> ```
> ...

 

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## nonhuman

After a long hiatus in RedHat world, I've finally got the time to work on getting Gentoo up and running again.  In my tinkerings tonight I've discovered that for some reason, Gentoo doesn't seem to like eth0 (the integrated NIC on my mobo) at all, while eth1, a tulip family card, works (compared to eth0).  I still have the problem that the internet is so slow (nearly 1 min pings on everything) that connections tend to time out before anything can actually happen.  I can't really think of what the problem might be, and I'm not really experienced enough with this sort of thing to start trouble shooting on my own.  Does anyone have any ideas?

Oh, and I'm now using the 2.5.46 kernel (the 2.4s still won't compile with the options I need).

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## nonhuman

Has anyone else had this problem?  I'm really running out of things to try here.

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## tomkamphuys

I've no idea about the slow connection, but the onboard nic problem sounds familiar. I had to add 'noapic' to the line in menu.lst containing kernel and root.

An other guy mentioned he had to disable USB, because there was something wrong with the irq's

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