New to Linux and system slow

I have installed Red hat 9 onto my IBM T40 laptop.
All is fine apart from when I log into Gmome desktop I get the error:
"Could not look up internet address for adsl-**********.onetel.net
This will prevent GNOME from operating correctly."

I can click log on anyway and it boots into the Gnome desktop, but the computer is very slow at opening any applications.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Steve

Sounds like your hostname is set wrong... try dropping to a command line and typing
hostname
see what output you get...

Here are a couple of pages on your error :
www.redhat.com/archives/redhat-list/2003-January/msg03132.html
and heres a more detailed thread of someone with the same problem :
pub14.ezboard.com/fnutzboardfrm17.showMessage?topicID=43.topic

The long time its taking to start is basically because gnome is trying to connect to that address, which it can't connect to because its dynamically assigned, and so its waiting about 1 minute for a timeout.

As far as the system being slow, you will probably want to start tweaking the box, Redhat comes with a lot of services enabled by default, you might want to try disabling some of them. I know for a new linux user its sometimes frustrating because you don't know how to tweak the thing the way you tweak windows. The trick is not to give up, once you break through the initial hard parts, you'll be part of a community that knows its using one of the best coded operating systems of all time.

Welcome to the linux community,
you might feel like registering yourself at the Linux Counter site :
counter.li.org/

Whoo Hoo..

As you suggested I used "hostname" to check the name of the pc

and added that to the end of the entry in the /etc/hosts file

See below:
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost adsl-12345.onetel.net

Thanks so much for the quick reply

Only thing now is that Mozilla 1.2.1 takes about 15 sec's to open. is that normal?

I checked the service configuration and i have the following
running:

anacron
apmd
autofs
crond
gpm
hpoj
ip6tables
iptables
irqbalance
keytable
kudzu
microcode_ctl
netfs
network
nfslock
pcmcia
portmap
rhnsd
sgi_fam
sshd
swat (I am testing Samba)
syslog
xinetd

Can I stop any of these?

Regards

Steve

Hehe good that error got sorted if you have another problem of the same sort just check those links I gave you, I read through it in detail and the guy has the exact same problem as you !

Btw, we were thinking of changing the site name to www.quickforumrepliesareus.cx .. but decided not to, because our beloved forum moderator tfs insisted that it was inauspicious to have a 22 character domain name.

I found Mozilla opens really slowly.. frankly I prefer Mozilla Firebird from www.mozilla.org/ I love it so much that I kicked out IE on my windows boxes to use firebird. Otherwise you could also check out Opera for Linux from www.opera.com its quite neat as well.

As far as the services go, you've caught me without my RH box right now, but I'll check what I've got disabled for you..

off the top of my head, i guess ip6tables can go if you don't use IPv6. If you're using the GUI tool, then it should give you a nice description of each service, kinda like how windows does. That helps you decide.

Lastly, congratulations on being Firewall.cx's 1 billionth happy user this minute.. you have won yourself a FREE Redhat 9 Customization Guide !
jamesthornton.com/redhat/linux/9/Customization-Guide/

It has a section on services as well, and should take some of the guesswork out of the OS and help wean you away from windows (muhahaha I converted another one
:twisted: ).