when ever you ftp as non-root out you get the following error: [menger@wombat menger]$ ftp dingo.dhs.org ftp: ftp/tcp: unknown service. It apears to work fine when ftping out as root.
As root, do chmod go+r /etc/services Net-tools isn't at fault. Did you perhaps upgrade samba recently?
Yes I did just upgrade samba.
This is a known problem with one of the later releases of samba and will be fixed there.