Arch Linux

AtlanticVoyager

Member

Registered: 2009-08-11

Posts: 23

"dhcpcd" not always finding my router when I boot up

Hi. I am new to ArchLinux, having installed it a few days ago. Most things are working well, but there are a few problems.
One of them is that dhcpcd does not always find my ethernet connection - eth0. About 50% of the time it hangs when trying to start the network, then times out with FAILED message given. I can start the connection manually by coding: dhcpcd in a terminal as root, but it is a bit annoying. Does anyone have any idea what is not configured correctly?

I don't know whether it is linked to this error message that I get whenever I try to gedit a configuration file:

GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. (Details -  1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.

Anyway here is the relevant section of my rc.conf file:
# DHCP:     Set your interface to "dhcp" (eth0="dhcp")
eth0="dhcp"
# Wireless: See network profiles below
#
#eth0="eth0 192.168.0.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.0.255"
INTERFACES=(eth0)

# Routes to start at boot-up (in this order)
# Declare each route then list in ROUTES
#   - prefix an entry in ROUTES with a ! to disable it
#
gateway="default gw 192.168.0.1"
ROUTES=(!gateway)

I hope someone can help. Thanks.

Trent

Member

From: Baltimore, MD (US)

Registered: 2009-04-16

Posts: 990

Re: "dhcpcd" not always finding my router when I boot up

Just as a preliminary check, is the router ready when you boot up?  My laptop boots faster than my router can connect (let's hear it for Arch), so if I turn on the power strip and immediately turn on my laptop, the network isn't up during the boot process.  If your router and your PC are "racing" you could easily encounter a problem like this.

I don't know what the gconf error you're seeing is; I don't use GNOME.  Does it happen every time you edit any file, or just certain ones?

Misfit138

Misfit Emeritus

From: USA

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 4,189

Re: "dhcpcd" not always finding my router when I boot up

If you search the forums, you'll find quite a few people complaining about the newest dhcpcd. Have you tried dhclient ?

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Sauengard

AtlanticVoyager

Member

Registered: 2009-08-11

Posts: 23

Re: "dhcpcd" not always finding my router when I boot up

Yes the router is always ready, at leaset the Power and ADSL lights are always on before I power up the computer.

In the Wiki I found the suggestion to add the following line to /etc/rc.local :
dhcpcd -k eth0 dhcpcd -nd eth0

I thought this had cured the problem, because the first two times I booted or rebooted the connection was there, but the third time, sadly, it wasn't and I had to start dhcpcd manually.

Thanks for the tip about dhclient. If I can't sort this problem in a few days I'll try that tack.

The gconf error problem only happens when I gedit a file as root. It does not happen when I gedit a file in my home directory as a normal user. I had better start a new thread as this is a different problem. Thanks for trying to help.