I'm having some trouble in MEPIS. Recently my startup times have gotten bad. It takes like 5 minutes to log in, it hangs while loading KDE and the loading screen disappears. When i finally managed to log in, it hadn't started any of the programs that run on KDE startup(kicker, amaroK, Kopete etc.), only a desktop with icons on it. No biggie, i just press Alt+F2 and type "konqueror" to report my problem here. Konqueror also takes at least 2 minutes to start up, and with konqueror all of my other programs appear. And all that in only 20 minutes. Woo! I think thsi has something to do with my /etc/hosts file, I read somewhere that KDEneeds to contact localhost or something and I need to add my IP in there. But I have a dynamic IP. What's strange is my startup times where OK before, but they have recently started to get worse(like yesterday only amaroK was slow to start up). But for example Desktop Configuration screen starts fast.

Thanks for any help!

have you looked in your log files to see if there are any errors ??

XFRee86.1.log, XFRee86.0.log, kdm.log, user.log, syslog, kdm.log reported nothing strange.
In kern.log however there was

Aug 11 11:19:31 Edasi-1 kernel: ABORTED IN=ppp0 OUT= MAC= SRC=62.216.251.205 DST=80.235.62.151 LEN=40 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=54 ID=9165 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=80 DPT=3097 SEQ=2729372501 ACK=0 WINDOW=0 RES=0x00 RST URGP

line however, and many times. I don't know if it has anything to do with it though.
This post describes a similar problem.

EDIT:That's strange. now that I rebooted KDE started normally, as did most of the programs. This didn't include konqueror, amaroK or kwrite

Hi joosep:

1.- You can safely have a loopback address (127.0.0.1) and still get a dynamic IP. The loopback address is for internal use only. This is my /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.1.2 pablop

Both of them match my computer.

2.- Those messages in kern.log are produced by your firewall. Try disabling it in the startup files and rebooting to see if everything is still slow.

Thanks for replying.
I've narrowed the problem down a little:KDE starts slow when I'm connected to the Internet. When there is no connection all programs start normally. I will now try editing my /etc/hosts file. Excpect an edit soon
EDITamn. Changing my hosts file to resemble that of pablob's didn't work. I'm open to any suggestions what to do now.

Yeah, seems like a /etc/hosts and/or DNS problem.

First, I'd check the contents of /etc/hosts when you are connected and when you are not connected.
Also check /etc/resolv.conf (there goes the DNS info).

There should be differences, and there should be backup copies of the files. Something like /etc/hosts.pre-dchp, /etc/resolv.conf-predhcp or whatever.

So, if you identify any of those "mutant" files, then try "chmodding" it so the DHCP process cannot modify it:

# chmod 444 /etc/hosts
or
# chmod 444 /etc/resolv.conf

Reboot and try.

I'll be away this weekend, on a LARP so I can't check in. Will try your suggestions monday.