I get the following error message when Linux is trying to open my Gnome session:

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

I should say that I'm on a dial-up, so I don't expect the internet to be connected. I should also say that my Terminal gives my username followed by my dial-up ISP, "@mfire.com". After I first setup Linux, however, I think Terminal used my username with "@localhost.localdomain".

So I opened /etc/hosts to find this:

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

How do I get rid of the error message? I don't think I should change /etc/hosts (maybe I'm wrong). And should this change the Terminal prompt?

I get the same thing. I don't know what it is. And Yes I'm a total Linux noob.