Everytime i log into gnome, i get a message that says "error looking up (computer name). Try adding it to your /etc/host'". Or something to that effect. How would i edit my /etc/hosts so t would stop giving me that message??

what's your /etc/hosts look like? can you post it?

This is my /etc/hosts. I haven't edited it at all, this is from a clean Slack 9 install. My hostname is Silver.jet (after the Tragically Hip song Silver Jet)

#
# hosts This file describes a number of hostname-to-address
# mappings for the TCP/IP subsystem. It is mostly
# used at boot time, when no name servers are running.
# On small systems, this file can be used instead of a
# "named" name server. Just add the names, addresses
# and any aliases to this file...
#
# By the way, Arnt Gulbrandsen <agulbra@nvg.unit.no> says that 127.0.0.1
# should NEVER be named with the name of the machine. It causes problems
# for some (stupid) programs, irc and reputedly talk. :^)
#

# For loopbacking.
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 Silver.jet.Silver.jet Silver.jet

# End of hosts.

mine's looks like this. but i don't know if redhat does this stuff differently or not but mine's got a localhost.localdomain alias in there. your's looks fine to me though.

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

Change The IP..you can not name localhost....!