I am unable to use wget, slackpkg, and swaret. links is working, as is ping.
I am able to use firefox and thunderbird.
This became an issue after I uninstalled dropline gnome.

I reinstalled the packages that were previously replaced by the dropline installer as per the sticky post on the dropline support forum. I re-ran netconfig and xwmconfig.

I have another machine on the same network, and it only runs KDE (never had dropline gnome installed on it) and it does not have these issues. the issue is not my network, it is local to this machine. I know I am probably overlooking an rc script or a *.conf, but I am at a loss here.

I am not blaming Dropline Gnome, so please, let's not start a "my GUI is better than yours!" flame war.

Any help is appreciated.

If you can run slackpkg at all and have gotten slackpkg to update at least onec since you installed it. Try running "slackpkg clean-system" and look for other packages that have been replaced by dropline. Also comb through /etc and look for files ending in .new to get your config scripts in order. if you cant run slackpkg at all and dropline uses a special extention to their package names then try "ls /var/log/packages |grep <dropline extention>" and make sure all of dropline is gone. remove any packages you find and install the original slackware ones off the slackware cds/dvd.

Thanks XGizzmo. I did all that you suggested before posting this question. I can run slackpkg, but only with /mnt/cdrom as a source. I cleaned all the 3rd party packages out of the system, except for the ones I built prior to the DLG install. All of the dropline packages are gone. I let slackpkg overwrite .new files after the clean-system and reinstall of replaced packages (basically putting everything back to "stock" install condition).
There has to be configuration file somewhere that I have overlooked or that has be deleted or omitted or something.
I am perplexed as to why I can use a browser and an email client, but not command-line network tools like wget and swaret. I obviously have network access. Can anyone tell me where I might find if specific network protocols are being blocked?

Yeah, it looks like dropline was not uninstalled properly ... it left things behind or changed things somehow.

Ya think?!?!


UPDATE: I copied the /etc/services file from the other working machine onto this one and ran diff. Nothing jumped out at me as being critically different. For kicks, I deleted the old /etc/services file and rebooted using the new one. All to no avail.

Yeah, and it's not too easy to solve such a problem (other than reinstall). If you know what files it changed, then find good copies of those files. Do you know what files it changed or installed ?

http://forums.droplinegnome.org/viewtopic.php?t=5262

Follow the instructions here. The problem is because of the nsswitch.conf that's intended for Avahi. There is a backup of the original in the same directory.

Thank you zborgerd!!!
I had only read part of that thread and only reinstalled the previously replaced packages. I had overlooked the information in the last step about the back-up files in /etc
I replaced nsswitch.conf with nsswitch.conf-dl-backup and all is well now!
I will return to use gnome again, but having been introduced to desktop linux through KDE, I have some hard habits to break. For now, it was to satisfy a curiosity.