.1861 Oops enabling eth0/eth1?

[Tom London]

OK. This now has me stumped....

Booting with 'vga-791' pauses for about 1.5 minutes trying to enable
eth0, but now it just fails and goes on to eth1 which also fails. 
(I'm running off a different network than before, so perhaps something
about the DHCP server is different, etc.).

The system completes booting, but the network is 'dead'. I noticed
this in /var/log/messages:

Jan 19 12:25:59 localhost kernel: e1000: eth1: e1000_probe: Intel(R)
PRO/1000 Network Connection
<<<<SNIP>>>>
Jan 19 12:26:03 localhost kernel: ip_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team
Jan 19 12:26:03 localhost kernel: Netfilter messages via NETLINK v0.30.
Jan 19 12:26:03 localhost kernel: ip_conntrack version 2.4 (8192
buckets, 65536 max) - 232 bytes per conntrack
Jan 19 12:26:03 localhost kernel: e1000: eth0: e1000_watchdog_task:
NIC Link is Up 100 Mbps Full Duplex
Jan 19 12:26:03 localhost kernel: e1000: eth0: e1000_watchdog_task:
NIC Link is Up 100 Mbps Full Duplex
<<<SNIP>>>
Jan 19 12:26:53 localhost dhclient: send_packet: Network is unreachable
Jan 19 12:26:53 localhost dhclient: send_packet: please consult README
file regarding broadcast address.

So I created an /etc/iftab file like:
# tbl
eth0 mac 00:0E:7B:4A:79:0B
eth1 mac 00:0E:35:36:F2:34

and rebooted.  This time I get:
Jan 19 12:42:44 localhost kernel: e1000: 0000:02:09.0: e1000_probe:
(PCI:33MHz:32-bit) 00:0e:7b:4a:79:0b
Jan 19 12:42:44 localhost kernel: e1000: eth0: e1000_probe: Intel(R)
PRO/1000 Network Connection

so the device now seems matched to the proper interface. But:
Jan 19 12:42:50 localhost kernel: e1000: eth0: e1000_watchdog_task:
NIC Link is Up 100 Mbps Full Duplex

but no joy on eth0. However, once booted, I can use the nice
NetworkManager applet to select the wireless network sucessfully. (Not
the hardwired one, just the ipw2200 one).

Could there be something funny with the e1000 driver?   Something else?

tom