lo interface never comes up at boot

[Derek Broughton]

Or, more specifically, it is enabled but never has an IP address (ie, it
should be 127.0.0.1).

Has anybody else seen this situation?  I get no errors at boot
time, /etc/init.d/networking executes, and all I see is:

Jan 20 11:41:55 othello kernel: [17179614.516000] NET: Registered protocol
family 10
Jan 20 11:41:55 othello kernel: [17179614.516000] lo: Disabled Privacy
Extensions
Jan 20 11:41:55 othello kernel: [17179614.516000] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0:
link is not ready
Jan 20 11:41:55 othello kernel: [17179614.516000] IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling
driver
Jan 20 11:41:55 othello kernel: [17179614.524000] eth1: NETDEV_TX_BUSY
returned; driver should report queue full via ieee_device->is_queue_full.


So, we see that it's at least recognized all three interfaces.  I have
to "sudo ifdown lo; sudo ifup lo" to get it to assign the IP, and until I
do nothing else on the system that requires TCP will run.
-- 
derek