after installing Red Hat 7.2 with GNOME I began noticing a few strange problems. First, I get a command prompt login instead of the GUI. startx works fine, but this seems strange because I have checked /etc/inittab and it is set to '5' and not '3'. After starting X I get a message that says GNOME couldn't find "probasco-r" (that's my last name and first initial) and that I should add it to /etc/hosts. I tried this, and after rebooting I got the GUI login, but my internet connection (broadband ethernet) quit working. After messing around with my network settings forever, I gave up and reinstalled Red Hat (again with GNOME). This solved my internet problem, but I still have to use startx and I still get the GNOME error.
I would really appreciate any suggestions anyone has!

Could you post the contents of /etc/hosts, as well the name that gets returned when you run the hostname command?

okey dokey....

/etc/hosts:
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost

hostname:
probasco-r

thanks for having a look at this!

In /etc/hosts, add an entry for your NIC's IP with a corresponding hostname (and optionally, an alias). My /etc/hosts looks like this:
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.0.2 penguinbox.localdomain penguinbox

Replace "192.168.0.2 penguinbox.localdomain penguinbox" with your IP and hostname. If you obtain your IP info via DHCP from your ISP, this won't work; I'd do the research on how to make that work, but it's getting late, so I have to log off for now and get some sleep...

Right that makes sense...

When I put probasco-r.localdomain probasco-r
int /etc/hosts I used the IP 127.0.0.1 which I understand is some sort of reference to my computer. In a way that kind of explains the reason the internet quit working when I added this line.
Right now I'm pretty sure my IP address comes from my ISP and isn't always the same. Should I talk to them and find out how it works?

Thanks for your time.

Right. The 127.0.0.1 address is reserved for the loopback device, which is a special, virtual device used by machines running TCP/IP.Yes, same as above.
Good luck! With most ISPs, you can expect a looooong pause on the other end of the phone the minute you say "Linux".


Here's something that might work-
Entries in /etc/hosts can have more than one alias associated with them. Try using "probasco-r " as a second alias for the localhost entry:You'll probably have to restart your network services (or just restart the 'puter) for the change to take effect.

works perfectly!
Thanks for all of the help! I never would have found it on my own.
--scobapro

Sweet, glad it worked out.