slow boot times

[yellowdog-newbie@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com]

> It will boot a little way, hang for a while, boot a little further,
> hang, so on and so forth. It also takes about the same amount of time
> to shut down.

I experienced identical symptoms on my newish iBook when
I had changed the host name of my machine (in /etc/hosts and
/etc/sysconfig/network) in xterm, as root, while X was up.
I didn't stop any services before this change, I don't know
if it is necessary and which and how...
Also a second time when I tried to change internet settings
because I was plugged into a different network at work from at
home. The ethernet card configuration program in YDL 3.0 is
not very newbie friendly, and I can't find an easy way to
save and switch between different ethernet connections.

I couldn't figure out what was wrong but the problems mysteriously
vanished after a couple more painful (even emergency) shutdowns
and painful reboots.