Q: Getting Lion to connect to the App Store for re-installation

I have had some small minor problems with Lion, which recently accelerated into larger ones when I upgraded the internal hard drives. The third party backup tool I used worked great, but it turns out that it doesn't capture the Recovery HD that Lion automatically creates when installed.

I was able to use the original hard drive to boot into recovery mode, but was having a devil of a time getting a network connection to re-install Lion; and the re-install would not proceed. Checking Terminal (ifconfig en0) showed me that the IP assigned to en0 was not correct.

I use this machine in my office, and we all have assigned IP addresses, so the new IP would not connect. Finally, after quite a bit of Googling, I found the below article (Using Lion Recovery when no DHCP service is available), which describes what the problem is (automatic DHCP IP assignment), and how to fix it (to your fixed IP address, with correct router, subnet mask, and finally DNS addresses).

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5034?viewlocale=en_US

Followed the instructions, got connected, and worked perfectly.

One thing to note: the instructions use "Ethernet" - however, if you have two network cards (as I do), you will have to choose which one to confirgure. In my case, I chose "Ethernet 1", which uses the en0, or 1st network card.

Hope this helps you!

S