squid fails to start on RHEL 5 server
 

Hello,
regards to all.
i've been unable to start squid on the server. i used 'system-config-services' and also the direct
'system squid start' command. the error message that is thrown up is-

init_cache_dir /var/spool/squid... /etc/init.d/squid: line 54: 4384 Aborted $SQUID -z -F -D >>/var/log/squid/squid.out 2>&1
Starting squid: /etc/init.d/squid: line 53: 4385 Aborted $SQUID $SQUID_OPTS >>/var/log/squid/squid.out 2>&1


i inspected the /var/log/squid/squid.out file and found the following message on several lines-

FATAL: Could not determine fully qualified hostname. Please set 'visible_hostname'

this has baffled me no end. can anyone instruct me on how to get squid up and going in this case?

If Squid doesn't not get a value returned by gethostname(), it looks up its visible_hostname setting for the name of the host it is running on. You can either set the visible_hostname value in squid.conf or alter your /etc/hosts file to include the box's hostname and IP address.