Again I'm answering in the order that advice and help appered on the digest, thank you all for your patience with me during this ongoing saga.
You shouldn't do this I don't think. The slackware /etc/hosts has the following comment:-
# By the way, Arnt Gulbrandsen agulbra@nvg.unit.no says that 127.0.0.1 # should NEVER be named with the name of the machine. It causes problems # for some (stupid) programs, irc and reputedly talk. :^) #
Probably not causing you a problem on a standalone system but worth bearing in mind. If you want to put a host name in /etc/hosts then give it a private IP address, e.g.:-
127.0.0.1 localhost 192.168.1.1 thomashobbes.enlightenment.net
True, but it does work on Slackware, I then tried 192.168.0.1, then tried the next install.
giving it the name of debian.org sounds, erm, very wrong to me. Your machine is *NOT* debian.org, don't tell it that it is... My home machine was set up with hostname set to dustpuppy and domain to thehouse.home (which does not exist :), it just worked. At a guess I'd say that you're specifying some DNS servers that it can't access when not dialed up, you should probably not set any DNS servers during the setup *except* from in the ppp config, though I normally set that to automagic, which just works :)
Somewhere that day I'd read something along the lines of 'just add .org' to your host name, it did in any case dissappear with that specific install, its now back to thomas-hobbes.
Open xterm, su to root, pppconfig. Done. simple. For network setup, edit /etc/network/interfaces (man interfaces will give all the information required).
There seems to be another problem there, trying su, in an xterm gives the answer authentication not recognised, perhaps I haven't installed sudo? What I have done is apt-get Midnight Commander, now I'm dealing with something I'm used to and its beginning to look a more realistic project.
Once again thank you all for you patience in dealing with my stream of questions, I have now joined the mailman.lug.org.uk Debian list so I can spread my bothering people between the two.