Thank you so much for your help. Unfortunately, I haven't got much further and
am feeling rather clueless. In response to your questions...
> 1. Have you verified that PPP successfully connectsg to your ISP? When the
ppp connection is up, if you run
> ifconfig -a
>
> does it return an entry for ppp0 that has valid-looking IP addresses on both
ends?
Yes, if I'm understanding you correctly. When I run ifconfig -a, I get the
following line as part of the output message:
inet addr: 203.33.188.179 P-t-P: 203.29.91.132 [this is different from the IP
address my ISP gave me, I'm not sure if that is relevant?]
> 2. Can you connect through the PPP connection using iP addresses? Can you,
for example, succeed with
>
> ping 206.132.41.202
>
> (that's the IP address of www.redhat.com, BTW)?
Yes. Ping works.
> 3. Can you use Netscape and lynx to connect to the URL by address, that is,
to
>
> http://206.132.41.202/
Yes, I could connect when I used a numeric IP address.
> 4. Is /etc/nsswitch.conf set up correctly? It should include the line
>
> hosts: files dns
My /etc/nsswitch.conf file read:
hosts: files nisplus nis dns
I deleted the "nisplus nis" bit, but this did not resolve my problem.
> 5. Can you ping the nameserver? (I can from here, BTW, so it is running.)
Yes.
> 6. Try taking the "search" line out of resolv.conf . With no domain after
it, it serves no purpose, and it might cause problems.
I've done this, but again this did not solve the problem.
> 7. Does your connection support dns queries? (This is really reaching, but I
suppose it's possible that you have some odd ipchains rules in place.) Do you
get a response to
>
> telnet 203.29.91.161 53
>
> (that is, can you telnet to the dns port on the nameserver)? You won't get
any useful response, but you should get a "Connected to ..." message.
Yes, I can telnet the server. I got a login prompt.
> One incidental suggestion -- you really shouldn't be relying on one
> nameserver. Your ISP should give you at least two nameservers to use in
> resolv.conf . THis does prompt me to ask ...
In response to a direct query, my ISP gave me just the one nameserver (ie
203.29.91.161). Maybe I should ask for another?
> 8. How much time passes between the message
>
> Looking up www.redhat.com
>
> and the message
>
> Unable to locate remote host www.redhat.com
>
> If it is a long time, you might just be suffering from an overloaded
> nameserver ... your dns query times out before the nameserver gets around to
answering.
In Netscape, I get no connection after a very long time (more than 10
minutes), as I've said it seems that Netscape freezes. No more moving stars
and comets, and I can't close the program without using alt-ctrl-backspace in
KDE. In Lynx, the failure to connect message comes up much more quickly, maybe
1-2 minutes. I tried using a number of different remote hosts too, not just
the red hat site.
I'm sure it shouldn't be this hard. I must be missing something. Any further
insights will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Sharon
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