Told to edit /etc/hosts, but how?

[Finished]

I am running Red Hat 8.0 with Gnome, and whenever I start up, it tells me to add a line to my /etc/hosts/ file or Gnome may not work correctly. Okay, so I find /etc/hosts, but I can't change a thing in it. How can I add a line to it?

[Dolda2000]

You will need to be root to do that. Anyhow, before that, have you set a hostname for your computer other than localhost?

[Finished]

Ah, yes, of course, root... how silly of me. And no, I have no other name besides localhost.

[Dolda2000]

You should have set one during installation. Many programs (including the GNOME session manager) doesn't like that you don't have a real host name.
Now after installation, you can set it in the file /etc/sysconfig/network. Then restart your networking with "service network restart". You'll need to be root for both of those to work.

[andutt]

I think gnome also will complaine if it can´t resolv your hostname with dns if you have configured dns. That a little bit annoying but you can ignore it... thats what not the question but anyway...

Regards

[Dolda2000]

You sure? I think it just uses the gethostby*() calls.

[l_Smokie]

add this line to /etc/hosts (use the root account)

(your hostname) localhost

u can find out your hostname via the hostname command .

i guess this should work properly .

regards,
Smokie