this message came up when I re-logged on a while ago, followed by a 'gnome may not run properly, are you really sure you want to log on?' one.
I since found that my previous shutdown hadn't been quite so elegant as it had appeared 'can't shutdown canna, in use by another machine' (this is a standalone PC) and that my /etc/hosts file had been trashed. Does anyone have sample hostname and hosts files so that I can logon without such errors?

Which brings us to the reason why I was re-logging on in the first place... I am one of the (very many, going by the number of posts) people who are unable to bring up eth0.
Ideas?
Usual newbie disclaimer: Funny, it worked under XP.

"Does anyone have sample hostname and hosts files so that I can logon without such errors?"

Here is my /etc/hosts file:

# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost


___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites