Apparently the network configuration has to be applied manually by the hostadmin everytime the vm is rebooted. I'm thinking initscripts is not enough for this and we should migrate to netcfg before the next downtime (!)

This was the config on rc.conf

INTERFACES=( "lo" "venet0" "venet0_1" )
venet0="venet0 127.0.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.255 broadcast 0.0.0.0"
venet0_1="venet0:1 174.142.147.197"
rt_venet0="-net 191.255.255.1 netmask 255.255.255.255 dev venet0"
rt_default="default gw 191.255.255.1"
ROUTES=( "rt_venet0" "rt_default" )

This is the current ip addr output:

1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 16436 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
inet6 ::1/128 scope host
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: venet0: <BROADCAST,POINTOPOINT,NOARP,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN
link/void
inet 127.0.0.1/32 scope host venet0
inet 174.142.147.197/32 scope global venet0:1