LinuxQuestions.org - How can I get the DNS from my dial-up ISP?

Hi.

This question is about a problem I have connecting to a dial-up ISP who gives me no DNS address. It is supposed to be obtained dynamically by using DHCP (I think).

I'm using a Compaq Presario 1235 laptop with dual boot (Red Hat Linux 7.0 and Win98 SE). The win-modem is a Lucent 56K-DF.

I had a few problems making the win-modem work with Linux (I had to download a driver and compile it) and connecting to my ISP.
At this point I am certain that I can connect to my ISP using kppp, because I get a "Connection" window, which tells me the speed of my connection. And the "Details" button tells me some things like "Bytes in" and "Bytes out" which I can see change when trying to navigate with my Netscape browser. And also, the IP address it assigns to me.

The problem is that every time I write a URL in my browser, I get nothing. Netscape just sits there saying it is "looking up host" or something like that and then tells me it cannot connect to it.
I can ping to my ISP and to other sites. I tried the IP address for google instead of its URL and it works.

Now, I've read several HOW-TOs and posts in this fine forum and most of them say that the DNS address should be provided by my ISP and it should be put in the /etc/resolv.conf file. The thing is that my ISP DOES NOT give a DNS address. Right now i'm using this same ISP but from Win98 in the same laptop and it works.

I looked through the kppp setup documentation in the Red Hat site for versions 7.0 and 7.1 and noticed that they're different: 7.1 has a check-box where you can tell kppp to dynamically (meaning, at connection time) get the DNS address from the ISP. But 7.0 doesn't have such thing. Is there an equivalent way of doing this in 7.0?

In case you need them, here are some of my configuration files.

/etc/resolv.conf:
search tutopia.com # the URL of my ISP

/etc/ppp/options:
debug
/dev/modem
115200
modem
defaultroute
noipdefault
usepeerdns # not sure if i should be using this
lock
:

When connected, I run a netstat and this is part of what i get:

Active internet connections (w/o servers)
Proto RecvQ SndQ Local Foreign State
tcp 0 0 200.53.168.108:1030 216.239.37.99:www ESTABLISHED
tcp 0 0 200.53.168.108:1029 216.239.37.99:www ESTABLISHED
...
udp 0 0 localhost.localdomain:1027 localhost.locald:domain ESTA..

The output for ifconfig:
lo Link encap: local loopback
inet addr: 127.0.0.1 Mask: 255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:3924 Metric: 1
Rx packets: 24 errors: 0 dropped: 0 overruns: 0 frame: 0
Tx packets: 24 errors: 0 dropped: 0 overruns: 0 carrier: 0
collisions: 0 txqueuelen: 0

ppp0 Link encap: Point-to-Point Protocol
inet addr: 200.53.168.XXX P-t-p: 200.53.165.XXX
Mask: 255.255.255.255
UP POINT TO POINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST
MTU: 1524 Metric: 1
Rx packets: 70 errors: 0 dropped: 0 overruns: 0 frame: 0
Tx packets: 75 errors: 0 dropped: 0 overruns: 0 frame: 0
collisions: 0 txqueuelen: 0

Note: I changed the last byte of the inet and P-t-p addresses of the ppp0 interfacer intentionally.

One thing I noticed when I am connected is that there is this file (/etc/ppp/resolv.conf) which changes its last accesed date to the last time I connected and its contents are:

nameserver 200.53.165.34
nameserver 200.53.199.1

I tried to connect to those, but it asks for a username and password. Used mine without luck.

Hope all this info is useful.
What do I need to do to navigate without knowing every site's IP?

Thanks in advance

:newbie: :confused: