Thanks for your interest, well you were right, i pinged the nameserver and the domain-nothing. then i used vim to set up the /etc.resolv.conf file entering the domain and nameservers, then as root i tried to retrieve the /etc/resolv.conf file and there are no entries in itt-weird. i went to the man page for the file and the info i entered with vim is displayed. what's going on here i don't know where to go from here. appreciate any input you may have on it. good thing i d/boot with win2000 or i couln't write this.