> So I'd appreciate any advice that might be out there re: how to call up > X apps without having to be on-line. Probably sgk is not in your /etc/hosts, or is on it with an invalid address when you're not online. Two possible solutions - 1) Rewrite your /etc/hosts when you go offline to move sgk's address back to 127.0.0.1 2) Use dummy ip to set at your old address. Either of these should be done in /etc/ppp/ip-down. Guy