Greetings!

I've just installed FC4 and this is my problem:

I get IP from wherever I am but, I can't seem to access outside the network. I've talked with an expert on debian and by the tests he made to my machine it seems my /etc/hosts file is empty and it shouldn't, and he also said that the problem should be that my computer doesn't resolve the DNS and by consequense, I can't access outside the network.

I also can ping any machine by it's IP address but I can't ping by the name.

Sorry if the terms I used aren't acurate and if hte way I've explained myself wasn't the most correct.

Thank You very much

What do you have in /etc/resolv.conf?
What is the output of route?
How are you connected to the internet?

/etc/hosts should at least contain your machine's name and ip:
Edit the second line to match your settings.

Try to ping an outside IP address based upon numbers. 130.57.4.70 is a random Novell address I get a reply from. If you can't get to that, most likely you need to define a gateway (most likely your router) to get out to the internet. If you can, you need to add dns server to /etc/resolv.conf
Ben

add the dns settings and if it still doesnt work, check your bcast address, should be the max range to your subnet address

I have seen this before on another FC4 machine.
In all probability your network configiration is not right.

I assume your network is set to DHCP mode. In all probability your setup has manually specified DNS server.
Make sure you set the DNS server to be automatic instead.

how do I set the DNS server to be automatic?

This is exactly the same situation what I've encoutered at the moment,

so I am really curious on this.

I've actually found this problem with the DNS settings set to automatic, but when I set them manually they are fine (this is in both Windows and Linux). In Linux, you can set DNS settings by running system-config-network as root. Select your LAN connection and click the "Edit" button. There should be a box saying "Automatically obtain DNS information from service provider", which you can either tick or untick. You will then need to restart the network.

You can also just add dns entries to /etc/resolv.conf.

As I have discovered in the past, if you're set to automatically get DNS addresses, /etc/resolv.conf will be overwritten by the dhclient-script every time you restart the network.

Hm.. interesting.. I think I'll try again as well.

bodhisattva, have you got the net working yet?
If you haven't, r u using two routers by any chance?

if you are make sure those you routers have different ip address.