no response to localhost ping

I am trying to troubleshoot my samba configuration and the first test in the samba manual was to do a ping to 127.0.0.1 which I duly did.
the response was nothing, NADA, nix. rien du tout.
The cuusor dropped a line and just sat there, It is still just sitting there as I write this on the umpteenth attempt, after rebooting.
Ohhold on.. after 3 mins it has come up with:
PING 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.

then the cursor has returned to the line beneath.
Surely this should be a tad quicker than this? like it should only take fractions of a millisecond?
What could be wrong?

(Edit)
I finally got bored waiting and killed the terminal, started a new one and did ifconfig:
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:09:5B:07:2C:34
inet addr:192.168.0.1 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::209:5bff:fe07:2c34/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:23 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:75 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:2738 (2.6 Kb) TX bytes:9813 (9.5 Kb)
Interrupt:18 Base address:0xd000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:843 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:843 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:71364 (69.6 Kb) TX bytes:71364 (69.6 Kb)

ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
inet addr:84.67.2.133 P-t-P:62.25.204.235 Mask:255.255.255.255
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:225 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:231 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:3
RX bytes:190987 (186.5 Kb) TX bytes:27333 (26.6 Kb)
This looks pretty normal to me?
Any ideas? anyone?

ok I have been reading some more and I think the prob may be the netmasks not matching.

Edit} well that didn't help, I have run Netstat-s
netstat -s
Ip:
7123 total packets received
7 forwarded
0 incoming packets discarded
5540 incoming packets delivered
7039 requests sent out
Icmp:
3348 ICMP messages received
0 input ICMP message failed.
ICMP input histogram:
destination unreachable: 4
echo requests: 3335
echo replies: 9
1 ICMP messages sent
0 ICMP messages failed
ICMP output histogram:
destination unreachable: 1
Tcp:
119 active connections openings
10 passive connection openings
0 failed connection attempts
1 connection resets received
0 connections established
1999 segments received
1993 segments send out
6 segments retransmited
0 bad segments received.
16 resets sent
Udp:
191 packets received
1 packets to unknown port received.
0 packet receive errors
307 packets sent
error parsing /proc/net/snmp: No such file or directory
netstat -i
Kernel Interface table
Iface MTU Met RX-OK RX-ERR RX-DRP RX-OVR TX-OK TX-ERR TX-DRP TX-OVR Flg
eth0 1500 0 51 0 0 0 141 0 0 0 BMRU
lo 16436 0 5445 0 0 0 5445 0 0 0 LRU
ppp0 1500 0 2090 0 0 0 2052 0 0 0 MOPRU

Next I will pore over the logs
Isn't this fun.......

just so all you chaps who were busting to give me advice know...
I reinstalled
yup, i copped out :)
thanks jeremy for your help on irc.

dilly

i don't know ur distro yet.

but see if u can get ur network configuration and make sure ur localhost addr (127.0.0.1) is in there and ur ipconf is intact then try starting the network service again.

service network stop
service network start

after lets ping 127.0.0.1 and see if it works.

urs in Linux :idea: :wink: