Mandrake Network Woes

[sdkramer]

I get the following error message when I start GNOME

"Could not look up internet address for aids.tristate.edu. This will prevent GNOME from operating correctly. It may be possible to correct the problem by adding aids.tristate.edu to the file /etc/hosts."

Also I can't seem to contact anyone on our top level domain (tristate.edu) But I know that I am getting an ip (others on campus can ping aids.tristate.edu) and I can browse the internet and ping addresses outside campus, but I cannot contact local computers. For example, a webserver and an ftp server that are on campus that I can neither use their services or ping them.

Thank you,

Seth D. Kramer

[Computer Hobbyist]

I've punched several buttons lately trying to get Samba to work and I have run into exactly the same situation. In solving my problem I read the following:

" The hosts file associates an IP address with one or more hostnames, so the system can determine the IP number that corresponds to a hostname. By default, the hosts file contains an entry that associates the hostname "localhost" with the IP address 127.0.0.1."

I know that Gnome needs to address your machine as localhost to run properly. I think it is trying to use aids.tristate.edu as your machines internal name. Does your /etc/hosts file contain a line that reads

127.0.0.1 localhost

You might try inserting one if you don't. See if that solves your problem. If it doesn't make sure that you have the correct address of aids.tristate.edu and add a second line to the hosts file to reflect that address.Add additional lines for any other hosts (I think of them as machines) you frequent. Normally you don't need to add lines (beyond the 127.0.0.1 localhost line) to your hosts file but it can be useful to allow you to access frequently used hosts by hostname if your DNS server goes off line.

The /etc/hosts file on my machine looks like this

127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.0.1 Homer
192.168.0.2 Bart
192.168.0.3 Lisa
192.168.0.4 Edith

(the names have been changed to protect the innocent.) Of course if you are addressing the broad world you should insert the full name and address of the computer instead of just the local network name. eg

XXX.XXX.X.X aids.tristate.edu

I hope this helps.To Statica and the others on the forum, let me know if I have screwed this up too much.

CH