i thought I'd repost with a touch more information. Httpd fails to start only when I have an entry in /etc/hosts for the primary ipaddress of the machines and only when that entry contains the fqdn... Thanks... _____ httpd: cannot determine local host name. Use the ServerName directive to set it manually. I specified ServerName in httpd.conf and it works but is there any danger to adding the manual setting and what might have caused this? /etc/sysconfig/network lists the correct hostname. After some more checking i remembered that I put a pointer to this machine in /etc/hosts and removing it seems to have stopped the error from occuring...any ideas as to why a self reference in /etc/hosts would cause the hostname lookup to fail? That seems strange. ____________________________ Mike Neuharth ADCS Technology Specialist http://www.umn.edu/adcs E-Mail : mjn at umn.edu Page Mail : 6126486512 at page.metrocall.com http://nifty.dsl.visi.com/ ____________________________