Activating network on boot nightmare

[mfyahya]

Hi All,
I switched to Linux a month ago and after a lot of web tutorials managed to set up a perfectly working RedHat Enterprise AS box, then I went and changed the video card (don't ask why) this made X server crash repeatedly. So I booted using a Knoppix disk and changed the /etc/inittab configuration file to boot to runlevel 3 . Then I managed to reconfigure X and got the system back up and and running as before and was happy..... until I found the network wasn't activating on boot. So I used the network configuration tool to activate eth0 and it worked. I also set it to activate on boot. But when I reboot it's inactive again. Also none of the servers I installed are running including apache, mysql, vncserver, ssh and smb even after I activate eth0 manually. They were all set up to run on bootup. I checked using the system monitor utility and these processes are not listed

I hope someone can help.. I'm not getting any error messages so I don't even know what to google for :(

PS. I'm not even sure if my earlier problem with the new video card has anything to do with the network not activating on boot up, but they happened one right after the other.

[deathadder]

Have you changed the runlevel back? Some of the servers you have may only have be set in run in runlevel 5, or what ever the runlevel was, same thing goes with the network. Apart from that I'm not sure :)

[mfyahya]

yes I did change it back torunlevel 5.
And all ther services are set to run at both runlevels 3 and 5

[deathadder]

Have you changed anything else recently? How are you running eth0, Static or with DHCP? What happens when you run the servers after booting? Any errors then? Does dmesg show any kind of errors? Is your network card still detected? Have you tried reseating your network card? You may have knocked it when changing your graphics card.

[mfyahya]

No I didn't change anything. I ran XFree86 -configure to restore the X for my new card, then changed /etc/inittab back to runlevel 5.

I'm running eth0 with dhcp.

what is dmesg?

the network card is working. i can still activate it after booting. It is just not being activated at boot, and for some reason that's making the servers not start up also.

[deathadder]

dmesg is a command that shows kernel messages(:confused: ) run it a root to double check if your getting any errors during the boot.