Harry. I have performed all kinds of tests, both with and without my cable modem, etc. and can no longer re-dupplicate what went wrong to cause me to end up with Knoppix as my hostname. Knoppix behaves quite well and my hostname is not being changed.

Further, in fiddling around with editing files and making changes, Gnome is no longer complaining about not finding a IP Address on boot up, and my new Hostname of starfire seems to be accepted. This is what my entries look like at this point:

/etc/sysconfig/network:
HOSTNAME=starfire
NETWORKING=yes
/etc/hosts:
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain starfire localhost

So, I think I will quit while I am ahead and everything is working, and call this whole episode a UFO siting.
I am keeping my new Knoppix CD and will be playing with it.....carefully.....in the future. Ha Ha Ha
Thanks for your help.