I'm one of the many confused by the new several minute delay when booting an upgraded Ubuntu 11.10 system. I have two NICs, both with static IP addresses, plus lo and nothing else (that I know of). So (a) what is the system waiting for? and (b) why does it think it failed and warn that is it is going to proceed with "broken" network configuration? This is EXTREMELY disconcerting even though every network thing I've known to check appears to be working fine. FWIW, here's my interfaces file (actual addresses obscured):

# The loopback network interface

auto lo

iface lo inet loopback



# The primary network interface

auto eth1

iface eth1 inet static

        address w.x.y.z

        netmask 255.255.255.248

        gateway w.x.y.z



# The extra network interface

auto eth0

iface eth0 inet static

        address w.x.y.z

        netmask 255.255.255.0

        gateway w.x.y.z

Oh, I'm not running under VMware, this is a dedicated PC, but I've followed the instructions about changing /var/run and /var/lock into symlinks anyway, but of course that didn't help.