How do I disable the zeroconf route so that the system will boot without the 169.254.0.0 / 255.255.0.0 route?

Symptom:

Every time the system boots, the zeroconf route (169.254.0.0) is enabled. You manually disable it by turning off the firewall and remove the route with 169.254.0.0 / 255.255.0.0 using the route command.

Example output of the route with the zeroconf route enables would like similar to the following:

# route Kernel IP routing table Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
10.15.50.0      *               255.255.252.0   U     0      0        0 eth0
169.254.0.0     *               255.255.0.0     U     0      0        0 eth0  

Solution:

To disable the zeroconf route during system boot, edit the /etc/sysconfig/network file and add the following NOZEROCONF value to the end of the file:

NETWORKING=YES HOSTNAME=localhost.localdomain NOZEROCONF=yes 

Additional Information:

Find out more about zeroconf at http://www.zeroconf.org/.