The problem has just been solved, apparently The server is fitted with a bcm5700 card, which takes a lot of time to come up (more than 40 seconds) probably because of un-optimized switch settings. That timeout is too long for linuxrc to get the network and map the NFS server. However, after a while when the network finally comes up, the NFS volume *can* be mounted and the manual install proceed, as long as one answers "no" when prompted to reconfigure the NIC by linuxrc ("Your network is already configured. Do you want to change this ?") Otherwise, should one answer "yes I want to change my settings" , it looks like linuxrc would switch down and reconfig the NIC, thereby inducing another delay and screw up the NFS mount again. Francois BLAES ? Global Unix Team ? Mars ISI DDI *170 1639 ? Tel +33 (0) 3 88 05 16 39 ? Fax +33 (0) 3 88 05 16 79