Yesterday, Shanna Brown gleaned this insight:
> I am having a very hard time getting connected to the internet. I am
> reletively new to linux, though I have been fighting with it for years. I
> like the format, but getting onto the net has always been a problem for me.
>
> Here is the situation...I have RH 5.2
> My modem initiates, dials the isp server, goes through the awful sounds of
> logging in, goes silent, and after about 20 seconds, hangs up and starts the
> process over again.
Well, some questions I have would be:
* Who is your ISP?
* Do you know what kind of authorization they use?
* how did you configure your connection (i.e. by hand or with a tool)?
* Are you a patient person? =8^)
If you want fancy GUI monitors, you're best off upgrading to the latest
versions of RH 6.2 and getting the Helix Code update for Gnome. There are
several applets that you can add to the gnome panel (and probably the KDE
menu bar too, but I don't use KDE).
There is also a program called pppstats (not a GUI monitor) that may be on
your system, which you can look at. You can also go to Freshmeat
(freshmeat.net) and download pload, or KPPPload, and see if they will
help, but to be honest, I doubt they will.
You probably want to run pppd in debug mode, and then watch the system
logs. If you look in /etc/ppp there should be a file called options, to
which you can just add the word debug to the end. Then you can use a
command like
tail -f /var/log/messages
to watch the output from pppd to see what the problem is. There's a lot
of stuff that it will print out, but if you read through it, you could
probably figure out what the problem is.
> > In windows I could monitor the activity of the connection through the dialup
> dialog box. It would tell me just exacly why it was disconnecting. Is
> there an equivilant in Linux? If so, what is it?
Heh... If you say so. In my experience, Windows never tells you exactly
why it does anything, and often tells you something that's completely
WRONG.
> My modem is set up IRQ4 Com1. There are not conflicts, I have already ruled
> that out.
I would agree... if there were conflicts you probably wouldn't be able to
dial at all.
> > I have also made sure that the login scripting is correct (right log in name
> and password).
This really is the tricky part, and may indeed be the part that's killing
you. Your ISP may be using plain-text, CHAP, PAP, or MS-CHAP for
authentication. You may not be set up properly for whatever they're
doing.
> Any Ideas???????
It really depends on how much you want to get into it. I've set up PPP
for my own connection to a bunch of different ISPs, and they were all
different. I would personally advocate reading the PPP howto and all of
the pppd man pages and do it the manual way, if you're not already doing
that. It may take longer on average to get a working connection that way,
but if you're one of the lucky ones that has an ISP which is doing strange
things, it may be the ONLY way you'll get it working.
You're probably using a tool to help you configure your PPP
connection? The older versions of the tools often had bugs that prevented
them from yeilding a working connection. Tools with more recent releases
of RedHat (et. al.) tend to be much better.
Does any of this help?
--
You know that everytime I try to go where I really want to be,
It's already where I am, cuz I'm already there...
---------------------------------------------------------------
Derek D. Martin | Unix/Linux Geek
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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