For some reason, the dhcp server running on the fb machine which assigns the IP address to c1sus (since its running a diskless boot) was down. This was preventing c1sus from coming up properly. The symptom was an error indicated no DHCP offers were made(when I plugged a keyboard and monitor in).
To check if the dhcp server is running, run ps -ef | grep dhcpd. If its not, it can be started with "sudo /etc/init.d/dhcpd start" |