smtp error 10 - since a set of rpm upgrades

[arthur m coucouvitis <acoucouvitis atipa com>]

hello, all

i find the following going on 
since i ran a _bunch_ of upgrades on an alpha pc164
the machine is running RH6.1 with all the 6.2 rpm
updates applied
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# fetchmail <my-mailserver>
skipping message 1 not flushed
skipping message 2 not flushed
reading message 3 of 18 (6314 octets) ..fetchmail: SMTP
connect to localhost failed
fetchmail: SMTP transaction error while fetching from
mail.atipa.com
fetchmail: Query status=10 (SMTP)
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i installed postfix as a replacement of sendmail 
because of comments i'd seen about it,
but that hasn't changed anything.
turns out i can still send mail
but local access is busted,

i tried the following
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# telnet localhost
Trying 127.0.0.0...
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Network is
unreachable
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i can ping my network interface,
i can telnet to the machine from itself
but smtp isn't cooperating :-(

i looked in /etc/pam.d, checked my inetd.conf
didn't see anything to affect smtp

any ideas/suggestions ?
i hope...