Strange Failure Mode in FreeBSD 4.11

[Alex Zbyslaw]

Martin McCormick wrote:

>	The Ethernet interface, known as em0 on this system, comes up
>According to all the messages.  If, however, you try to use it, it is
>as dead as a stone.  If I try to ping the local host from root, I get this:
>
>ping: sendto: Permission denied
>ping: sendto: Permission denied
>ping: sendto: Permission denied
>
>[...]
>	If I do an ifconfig em0, the settings return as they were set
>in rc.conf.  The router address is correct and the fact that one can't
>ping 127.0.0.1 either tells me that something really nasty happened
>somewhere along the way.
>  
>
Maybe someone will just tell you an answer, but in case not can you 
actually post the output of ifconfig -a and all the em0 stuff from 
dmesg.boot?

Off the cuff, are you *sure* an ethernet cable is actually plugged in 
and that it is a known working cable?  Note sure why that would scotch 
localhost, though.

--Alex