A couple of months ago, my harddrive was damaged so had to build a new system from scratch - potato boot floppies, then a few packages, then apt-get dist-upgrade to testing, then added the rest of the system.
A few weeks later, I installed lprng (+ related), and at that point, when I started to get "Nov 30 07:36:04 SanMarco checkpc[1009]: Get_local_host: 'localhost' IP address not available!" messages, discovered I had a network problem and have been stuggling for several weeks trying to diagnose and fix it (no printing in the meantime!). First, my /etc/hosts file: 127.0.0.1 SanMarco # The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts # (added automatically by netbase upgrade) ::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopback fe00::0 ip6-localnet ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix ff02::1 ip6-allnodes ff02::2 ip6-allrouters ff02::3 ip6-allhosts thinking that the first line should be 127.0.0.1 localhost SanMarco I manually changed it (also experimented with eliminating the uppercase letters in my hostname) - no luck results of ping BEFORE adding "localhost" to /etc/hosts: SanMarco:/etc# ping -c 3 127.0.0.1 PING 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes --- 127.0.0.1 ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss results of ping AFTER adding "localhost" to /etc/hosts: sanmarco:~# ping -c 3 sanmarco PING localhost (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes --- localhost ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss After adding "localhost", the printer spooler seems to start, message at boot: Nov 29 22:16:52 localhost kernel: lp0: using parport0 (polling). yet, still no printing: results of a test run of lpr AFTER adding "localhost" to /etc/hosts: sanmarco:~# lpr test Status Information: sending job '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' to [EMAIL PROTECTED] connecting to 'localhost', attempt 1 cannot open connection to localhost - Connection timed out Make sure LPD server is running on the server (the same results whether run as root or as ordinary user) even if I try sanmarco:~# echo test > /dev/lp0 I can't print, though an indicator light flashes momentarily. If I try to ping my (dynamic) ip address, I get the following: SanMarco:/etc# ping -c 3 66.9.80.10 PING 66.9.80.10 (66.9.80.10): 56 data bytes ping: sendto: No buffer space available ping: wrote 66.9.80.10 64 chars, ret=-1 ping: sendto: No buffer space available ping: wrote 66.9.80.10 64 chars, ret=-1 ping: sendto: No buffer space available ping: wrote 66.9.80.10 64 chars, ret=-1 --- 66.9.80.10 ping statistics --- 3 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100% packet loss I get the same results with or without "localhost" added. I also get the error message Nov 29 14:28:40 SanMarco kernel: neighbour table overflow all the time. I read in the list that this might be due to loopback interface (I don't know what that is) problem, so I added the line "auto lo" to my otherwise empty /etc/network/interfaces with no effect, then I tried manually "ifconfig lo up" so the loopback interface is active, but I still get the same error messages. My connection to the otside world works fine, exim and fetchmail for mail delivery, I can connect via "pon" to my isp, I can ssh in or out. When I add "localhost" to /etc/hosts, fetchmail (I think) no longer collects mail, or perhaps its exim, anyhow it doesn't reach the mailspool. These problems are way beyond my capacity, I am an "end-user". I will be grateful for any advice, help, solutions. I was thinking to "reinstall" the broken parts of the network, but I'm not sure which or how to safely. Thanks for the patience of anyone who has read to here, Tomasz
