Hi,
I'm new to solaris basically, with a decent background in linux.
But everything seems to have jsut enough differances to be problematic.

two things i need answered are
1) How do i alter the network settings in Solaris 2.5.1?
2) how do i go about installing netscape (already got navigator-v478-us.sparc-sun-solaris2.5.1.tar.gz but even the tar command doesn't work the way i am used to)

thanks,
Rob

2.5.1 !! That's bleeding edge technology
There are several commands depending of what settings you are looking for.
Start with:
ifconfig
ndd
route
/etc/hosts /etc/resolv.conf /etc/nsswitch.conf /etc/defaultrouter
gunzip nav*.gz
tar xf nav*.tar

i think the /etc/resolv.conf will fix my issues (all seemed to be dns related)

and on the other, i am pretty sure this machine said something along the lines of "gunzip not recognised"

Becareful in solaris...changing the settings in only a few files sometimes gets temporary results. If you reboot it might change to the old network settings. I would check everything that jll said and go from there. If you are changing IP or hostnames etc...