Weird Gaim/DNS problem

Hello. I use my laptop at work and I have this weird Gaim issue. When I'm at work, I can connect to any Gaim account (MSN, AIM, Yahoo and Google Talk). But when I try using gaim on my home network, none of the gaim protocols connect. So I ran ethereal at home checking to see what was happening under the hood, and it looks like for some weird reason Gaim tries to resolve my DNS server at work which is obviously not accessible over the internet. I checked my /etc/resolv.conf file when I'm at home and I don't see my work nameservers in there. I know this is a problem with gaim or gaim caching that work nameserver somewhere, because I've tried Kopete and I have no issues with Kopete. But I might be wrong, it just might be my slackware install caching nameserver somewhere else. has anyone come across this problem or know where I can start checking for cache nameservers. btw. i'm running Slackware 11.0, with kernel 2.6.13

TIA

If you can ping any host in the internet and can browse, there should be no issue with gaim since you as well said that kopete is working. Meaning, you are enabled to connect to the internet and name resolution is working just fine.

it just might be my slackware install caching nameserver somewhere else. has anyone come across this problem or know where I can start checking for cache nameservers.

Just start bind if you have installed the package.

# chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.bind
# /etc/rc.d/rc.bind start

Then edit /etc/resolv.conf:

lookup file bind
nameserver 127.0.0.1

Using this setting, you don't need to change resolv.conf anywhere you go and you now have caching name server.

To test:

# dig +short localhost
127.0.0.1

Should reply back 127.0.0.1 as address for localhost.

# dig +short -x 127.0.0.1
localhost.

You just did the reverse lookup and should answer localhost for 127.0.0.1.