I have a super-duper PXE boot configuration happily running in my LAN for ages now. Nothing really changed, but all of a sudden, one day several boot-images refused to boot.
Their common error was always something with not being able to bring their network interface up...
This message keeps repeating, with increasing timeout. After letting it try it's best for a while, it finally hits the wall with a kernel panic:IP-Config: eth0 hardware address 00:00:00:xx:xx:xx mtu 1500 DHCP
eth0: link up
IP-Config: no response after 2 secs - giving up
So far, I haven't found what causes this problem, but there's a very good thread about PXE failing with this error, on www.unix.com forums./init: .: line 3: can't open /tmp/net-eth0.conf
Kernel panic- not syncing" Attempted to kill init!
Pid: 1, comm: init Not tainted 2.6.35-generic #35-Ubuntu
I'm still investigating this...
Maybe a broken/drunk network switch?