Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2 - Starting network interfaces at boot-up

As per my previous post, I've just started using Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.2, having got used to using RHEL 5.x for the past few years.

I typically run my Linux servers without X11 started, as I tend to run most processes via command-line ( being an old OS/400 junkie at heart ).

To achieve this, I edit /etc/inittab and change: -

id:5:initdefault:

to: -

id:3:initdefault:

which means that Linux starts at run-level 3 ( Multi-User mode, console logins only ) rather than 5 ( Multi-User mode, with display manager as well as console logins [X11] ), as per Wikipedia below: -



This works perfectly in RHEL 5.x and also in 6.2.

However, I found that my network interface ( eth0 ) wasn't activating on boot-up, requiring me to run: -

$ ifup eth0

post-login, which was a pain.

A quick Google later, and I found this: -

 [SOLVED] 2 eth interfaces not coming up at boot

which said: -

The interfaces will come up on boot if you add the following line to your /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth# files.

ONBOOT=yes

I checked, and lo and behold ....

$ cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

DEVICE="eth0"
HWADDR="08:00:27:87:E2:DC"
NM_CONTROLLED="yes"
ONBOOT="no"

I changed this to read ONBOOT="yes", rebooted and .... c'est voila

Job done.