Das Werkstatt

[PROBLEM]
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...

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

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:

/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

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.

I'm still investigating this...
Maybe a broken/drunk network switch?