[plug] DNS problem has me stumped

[sol]

Hi there,

I'm having that has me baffled regarding DNS resolution on a gateway 
server. Last Sunday out of the blue it just stopped  resolving internet 
addresses. I'd had a similar problem before which I traced down to 
configuration errors, but I've gone over this time and again and 
everyone seems correct.

Internal networking (192.168.x.x) seems fine but trying to get anything 
from the internet (including pinging anything external) just hangs. I've 
checked with the ISP whose DNS server I was using over ADSL, and all's 
well at their end. Also I can ssh to the machine from home without any 
delay or problems.

One curiosity is when using the web(apache) locally it won't resolve 
it's own hostname. So I can get http://localhost/ but not http://gw/ 
which just hangs until the browser times out.

I should mention that this machine was shutdown ungracefully due to a 
blackout on the evening prior to this problem arising and reported 
deleted inodes.

Any tips on where to hunt down the cause of this problem would be 
appreciated, cos I just don't know where to look.

Kind regards,
sol

PS: I haven't been able to make it to any PLUG meetings to pay my dues 
and am not sure that I will be able to make it any time soon due to 
evening work. Is there any PLUG committee member SoR I renew my 
membership with?