Raspberry Pi wont boot until ethernet cable is connected

Question

I'm using the RetroPie distro, on a Model-B Pi.

The problem I'm having is that everytime I turn on my Pi, it doesn't boot until I plug an ethernet cable connected to a powered PC.

It just stays on the "pre-boot" screen, after some [INFO] messages, with the Raspberry Pi logo on it. (With the underscore cursor flashing)

After I plug the cable, it resumes it's boot normally, without any further dependency from the ethernet cable/connection.

The expected behavior is that the Raspberry Pi should boot automatically into EmulationStation.

Does anyone know how the ethernet connection requirement could be ignored?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I suppose it is a DHCP client which is waiting for a response on the boot process.

Comment the eth0 section inside the /etc/network/interfaces file. Or change to a static address.

Answer 2

One possible cause is that you have some ip configuration getting set in the cmdline.txt file. If you do, then remove that data.

It does not seem to be related to DHCP, because if you change the timeout in /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf it still waits that long.