AP> Can someone remind me what the supidty is that stops XEmacs starting on AP> a IP configured but disconnected machine under RH Linux. AP> Now I have run into this I have to question why we are even trying to AP> do net related functions at startup. Its only an editor for goodness AP> sake. I beg my pardon for not reporting that earlier (I've spotted the problem about a month ago), but better later than never. The problem with DNS lookups on XEmacs startup are caused by getaddrinfo() function with hints.ai_flags = AI_CANONNAME. These kinds of calls are in src/process-unix.c and src/sysdep.c. I think those functions are somewhat buggy in glibc 2.1.x. The nature of the bug is as follows. The FQDN of my machine is "tyranny.hsys.msk.ru". When XEmacs calls getaddrinfo(), that function tries to resolve sequentially "tyranny.hsys.msk.ru." "tyranny.msk.ru." "tyranny.ru." "tyranny." Same thing goes on with "localhost". Here are logs of my local DNS-cache: ＠400000003b5881b009bfb84c cached nxdomain localhost.hsys.msk.ru. ＠400000003b5881b009bfcbd4 sent 2775 39 ＠400000003b5881b009bfd78c query 2776 7f000001:0730:e0b6 28 localhost.msk.ru. ＠400000003b5881b009bfeb14 cached 28 localhost.msk.ru. ＠400000003b5881b009bffab4 sent 2776 34 ＠400000003b5881b009c0066c query 2777 7f000001:0730:e0b7 28 localhost.ru. ＠400000003b5881b009c019f4 cached 28 localhost.ru. ＠400000003b5881b009c02994 sent 2777 30 ＠400000003b5881b009c05874 query 2778 7f000001:0730:e0b8 28 localhost. ＠400000003b5881b009c06bfc sent 2778 27 I think this should be reported to glibc-people, but I could not find time for that. I promise I'll do. I am not sure what should be done about that on XEmacs side. Hope it helps. --alexm