I'm on Fedora Core 1 hardwired into a router connected to a cable modem, and my connection is usually not a problem. When the internet dies, however, apps like Firefox and Emacs will take about 60 seconds to launch. This happens both when the connection is dead at bootup ("bringing up eth0 [FAILED]") and when the cable service goes down while the computer is already on. Without the internet, some applications still start up fine. Firefox and Emacs are the two that I've noticed having problems. For example, in my terminal if I go "emacs [file]" it will hang for about a minute before finally bringing up xemacs in its own window (when the internet is dead). As soon as my connection comes back, everything returns to normal. Can anyone explain to me why this happens?

TIA,
Travis

OK I figured it out myself. My /etc/hosts file was blank -- all it said was "Do not remove the following line, or various programs that require network functionality will fail." Somehow, that essential line got removed, so I just put in "127.0.0.1 localhost. localdomain localhost" and saved it, then restarted X. Now when the internet connection goes away, emacs and Firefox start up as normal.