After googling around a little I double-checked my /etc/hosts and lo and behold I had inadvertantly deleted the entry for the host machine. Put it back in and it works like it used to. d'OH!
Just for fun I commented it back out and tried strace. It wasn't 100% clear but knowing the answer already I could see that it was trying to connect to a nameserver that wasn't available. How about that. So all fixed, thanks. Judah
