An issue that has been bothering me for over a year now. My notebook, running ubuntu 10.04, is almost all the time using a wired connection, with static IP address. And a remote DNS server. Network is configured with entries in /etc/network/interfaces and /etc/resolv.conf, rather than whatever the gnome UI tool was (*)

But if I'm out, or simply unplug the network cable, a few things get weird. Specifically the gnome-panel stops working - it is still there, but isn't updating. And opening a nautilus window (e.g. to look at files on the local disk) has huge time-outs. By that I mean it will not open the window for something like 30 or 60 seconds; but when it does finally open it I can see the files and it is perfectly usable.

Everything else works fine, alt-tab between windows, etc. I use the commandline to find the pid of gnome-panel, kill it, wait a couple of seconds, and it opens up a fresh panel which is normally usable.

(Something like 10 minutes later it will have locked/crashed again; the same for the nautilus windows.)

I'm guessing this is a DNS issue? Would setting up a local DNS server help? Guess number 2 was related to having a file server mount (samba, though running on another linux box), and symbolic links to files and directories on that file server on my desktop.

My question is a bit vague... Does anyone recognize these symptoms, and have a suggestion? Or do you have some troubleshooting suggestions for narrowing down the problem?

My /etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1   localhost
127.0.1.1   myhost

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1     localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0 ip6-localnet
ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
ff02::3 ip6-allhosts

127.0.0.1      testsite.local

#Other test website URLs here

UPDATE: Some timings to open some desktop folder icons. This is after pulling out the network cable. A sub-directory of the desktop took 23 secs to open up. Content appears immediately (just 8 files, it has no further subdirectories). The home directory icon took 12 seconds to open up, but then took about 30 seconds for the files to appear. I closed it and tried again. This time it took 18 seconds to open up, but then 70 seconds before anything appeared.

*: I couldn't work out how to use the gnome network tool for my needs, which include 3-4 static IPs for testing virtual hosts locally.