Re: starting X hangs on network timeout (hosts file ignored)

[Steven Satelle <ssatelle@hotpop.com>]

> Ping uses the hosts file but host seems to ignore it. So if the
> nameserver is not reachable then ping <hostname> works but
> host <hostname> returns
> 192.168.0.1 connect: Network is unreachable
> Nameserver not reachable
> litshi.luna.local A record not found, try again
> my /etc/hosts has the following lines:
> 127.0.0.1       localhost
> 127.0.0.1       litshi.luna.local       litshi
> (I know pointing <hostname> to 127.0.0.1 is not advised, but its a
> laptop and has several possible IPs).
> 
> Any ideas?
> 

right you are getting me puzzled now :-)
I suppose a bit of fishing is in order
what's in /etc/host.conf, it should say 
'order hosts,bind'
that file tells the sys how to resolve hosts in the network, you want it
to check the local hosts file before going to bind
also whats in /etc/hostname? It should, at least on my sys, have the
hostname of the sys, not the fqdn, just the hostid.If It doesnt use 
'hostname litshi' to set it, ignore the fqdn for now, just try with that.
If that doesnt work, have you looked at m$ windows recently ;-)
If even that doesnt work you could try (dont tell anyone I said this) a
reboot, after setting the hostname and entering it into /etc/hosts, the
files may just need to be re-read