Check that your router is not doing anything funny. I had a problem just like this and reset my router and it worked

On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 8:29 AM, JB <jb.1234abcd@gmail.com> wrote:
Timothy Murphy <gayleard <at> eircom.net> writes:

> ...
> [tim <at> helen ~]$ cat /etc/hosts.conf
> cat: /etc/hosts.conf: No such file or directory
>

You mistyped it ...
Make sure you have that right (if not, let me know).

$ cat /etc/host.conf
multi on
order hosts,bind

I will take a look at the remainig things.

JB



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