On Sun, Dec 1, 2013 at 4:09 PM, Nico Kadel-Garcia <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 1, 2013 at 12:44 PM, Paul Robert Marino <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> Have you tried adding dhclient to your package list in your kickstart file.
>> The trick with a nobase install is you can often be surprised by some
>> of the things that are missing from it.
>> if you don't have /sbin/dhclient on the host than that is probably your problem.
>
> They said it works if they do "ifup eth0" after the system as
> completely booted.  That's a fairly compelling hint that "dhclient" is
> available, unless they've replaced it with some other package.

I wouldnt be too sure on that my self the network scripts are quite
old and due for a rewrite they they use a mix of the legacy commands
(ifconfig and route) but they also make heavy use of the ip command in
others. the ip command can do dhcp without dhclient because it can use
the dhcp client embeded in the kernel if the dynamic flag is set to on
in the link.
While I highly doubt that would happen I wouldn't put it out of the
realm of possibilities because I have seen strange issues with them in
the past. finally its an easy thing to check if /sbin/dhclient exists
then its there if not its missing.

That said the Spanning Tree suggestion John Lauro made earlier wasn't
a bad one and the it can be adjusted in the in
/etc/dhcp/dhclient-${DEVICE}.conf but I doubt thats the case since the
default timeout is 60 seconds.
increase to 90 seconds on eth0 example
"
echo 'timeout 90;' >> /etc/dhcp/dhclient-eth0.conf
"
Also spanning tree should always be off on ports going to hosts
whenever possible or or at the very least set to the switch vendors
equivalent of fast learning mode. Additionally some switch vendors
have proprietary loop detection options which in many cases faster
than Spanning Tree or Rapid Spanning Tree.

finally you could see if it is actually a dependancy issue once and
for all by doing a "yum groupinstall base" on one of the hosts. if it
resolves the issue on that host then you know its a dependance if not
then you know its a network or hardware issue.