ive gone for an ubuntu install in the meantime, which went very easy compared to solaris! didnt have to configure anything, it 'just worked'!

i'll be back to this thread, i'm nt one for giving up on something, but it was proving to be very dificult, i think i'll do a clean solaris install and try again with the information i've been given see how i get along.

thanks to everyone for their help, but i will be back here again very soon to have another go at solaris!

thanks

right, i said id be back and here i am...

isntalled ubuntu, very straight forward everything autoinstalled... but back to a challenge!

this is how far i've got...

- a new clean install of Solaris 10
- a router for the internet on IP '172.26.0.1' (which works fine, as i have other machines running windows connected fine)
- for arguements sake, this new solaris machine will use IP '172.26.0.44' and the name of the machine is 'unix'
- i have made the following changes:

/etc/hosts
172.26.0.44 localhost loghost unix

/etc/netmasks
172.26.0.0 255.255.255.0

/etc/nsswitch.conf
(contains) host: files dns

/etc/nsswitch.dns
(contains) host: files dns
ipnodes: files dns

created /etc/hostname.lo0
172.26.0.44 unix

created /etc/defaultrouter
172.26.0.1

created /etc/resolv.conf
nameserver 80.58.0.33
nameserver 80.58.32.97

/etc/inet/hosts
172.26.0.44 unix

/etc/inet/ipnodes
172.26.0.44 unix

and it does still not work...

in addition, i have doen the following:

# svcadm /network/dns/client:default
# svcadm /network/dns/server:default

but it still doesnt work...

at this stage, i think im making a small mistake, but not sure where... any help would be greatly appreciated.

thank you in advance

edit :

i can ping my own machine (172.26.0.44) but not the router (172.26.0.1) or anything obviously past the router

lo0 is the loopback interface and not a real network adapter. look with "dladm show-dev" for your nic. if nothing is to be seen, your nic is not supported by solaris and maybe need a special driver...
also, don't change the ip for localhost! it's 127.0.0.1....