When I setup redhat 6.1 on a system at work, I setup my eth0 "realtek" to
use dhcp.  Upon rebooting, I noticed it locked up, so I shut the system
down and removed the card.  Upon booting again, I noticed that the system
was using the pump program to pull the dhcp.  Well, at work were using a
windows98 system to deliver internet (laugh).  Through the internet
connectivity sharing that ms uses, it sends out a very weak dhcp signal, or
possibly modified version of dhcp.  So, no matter what I tryed, weather
bootp, dhcp, or entered the network information manually, it still locked
up.  How I worked around this:  I restarted, removed the ethernet card and
the configuration, I then did an rpm -e pump to remove it from the system.
I then installed dhcpcd from the cd.  After that, I rebooted and
reinstalled the ethernet card.  My system seen the card on boot, but
delayed the startup cause pump was not installed, after logging in as root,
I started dhcpcd and used the command "ifconfig" and noticed I was on the
network.  I tryed to ping a remote host on the internet, and was able to
ping without no problem.  I just thought, that maybe you should setup a way
to use pump or dhcpcd during the ethernet card setup.