Versions 11.04, 11.10, and 12.04

Okay! That one took me too long!?

I was searching for "Waiting up to 60 more seconds for network configuration..." and just couldn't find where the heck that was hidden. It's in /etc/default/failsafe.conf and if you look at that file you'll see a few sleep in there.

I'm not too sure what that's really used for, but having to wait 2 minutes for the server to boot seems dramatic when before it used to start immediately and worked just fine.

So, edit the file, scroll down and remove the sleeps... I do not recommand you do that though, your problem if you break your system.

The is the version in Ubuntu 12.04 (File: /etc/init/failsafe.conf)

    # The point here is to wait for 2 minutes before forcibly booting
    # the system. Anything that is in an "or" condition with 'started
    # failsafe' in rc-sysinit deserves consideration for mentioning in
    # these messages. currently only static-network-up counts for that.

        sleep 20

    # Plymouth errors should not stop the script because we *must* reach
    # the end of this script to avoid letting the system spin forever
    # waiting on it to start.
        $PLYMOUTH message --text="Waiting for network configuration..." || :
        sleep 40

        $PLYMOUTH message --text="Waiting up to 60 more seconds for network configuration..." || :
        sleep 59
        $PLYMOUTH message --text="Booting system without full network configuration..." || :

    # give user 1 second to see this message since plymouth will go
    # away as soon as failsafe starts.
        sleep 1

Be careful, because the $PLYMOUTH calls end with a ||, personally, I commented all those lines and it works with my server which now boots 2 minutes faster. Imagine that! (Note that what's really important is the firewall, MAKE SURE IT'S ON BEFORE THEN!)

Good luck.

Version 12.10 (and beyond?)

Not too sure whether this works or not, but I did not encounter the problem (yet) with 12.10. This may just be because I was always connected although I think I tried a couple times without the cable and it still worked. So my guess would be that it got fixed. Let me know if you encountered the problem in 12.10 or beyond!