Sendmail hangs at startup

[Riccardo Gusso <rgusso@unive.it>]

Hello,
during the boot my sid hangs for some minutes  
starting sendmail; then it completes the boot without error messages or
warning, and sendmail works correctly.
I have noticed that when sometimes the ethernet card is not seen by the
kernel at the startup (it happens sometimes, I don't know why), I don't
have such problem, so that sendmail hanging is in some way related to
ethernet card configuration, but even if I have investigated a lot, I
haven't yet found the cause. Somebody suggested me to check the
/etc/hosts file, but it seems ok:

rick@murena:~$ less /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain    localhost loghost murena
# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
# (added automatically by netbase upgrade)

::1     ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
ff02::3 ip6-allhosts
/etc/hosts (END) 

Where could the cause of the problem be?
Bye,
         Riccardo