Ok, so after reading through this entire thread, I've run the various things people have suggested in order to help debug this.
Attached is the output, as follows: hosts-* - the hosts file before and after hostname-* - the output of hostname, hostname -f and ping -c 4 $(hostname) before and after strace-*.log - the output of the strace command suggested above before and after (two logs for each). Run on gnome-terminal, and the first run was the first time I launched gnome-terminal after booting into feisty. time-*.log - the output of the time command suggested above before and after (two logs for each). Run on gnome-terminal, and in each case <ctrl>-<d> was sent as soon as the terminal launched. Hope this helps, Vipul ** Attachment added: "See comment, output of various debugging commands as mentioned in the thread" http://librarian.launchpad.net/6988514/94048-output.tar.gz -- [feisty] Slow gnome application startup due to /etc/hosts misconfiguration https://launchpad.net/bugs/94048 -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs
