I have just finished installing ubuntu 5.10 and when i login i get a message that says:

"Could not lookup internet address for ubuntu, this will prevent GNOME from operating correctly. adding ubuntu to file /etc/hosts may fix this problem"
I'm a newbie and have no idea what it mean by "add ubuntu to /etc/host"
does it want me to just type ubuntu and the end of the file or give an address?

Hi

Is your machines name ubuntu by chance?
You probably just need to add your machine name to the /etc/hosts file.
To begin with, there is quite a lot of stuff on the web about this problem and how to solve it. So you could have a look around the web first by copying the exact error message and pasting this into your search engine (I used google and got 637 hits).

The thing to do is to backup your /etc/hosts file first.

So, have a look at it to satisfy your curiousity:

less /etc/hosts

Then make a backup

cp /etc/hosts /etc/hosts_backup

then type

echo "127.0.0.1 ubuntu" >> /etc/hosts

Try starting X up again
If this hasn't solved the problem you can just go back to your original /etc/hosts file by

mv /etc/hosts_backup /etc/hosts

Best of luck