I have a problem, very fickle. I culd log on fine before, after running about fifteen suggestions from this great site, but something happened; I don't know what, and now I can't connect at all. I did connect this morning from root, but I can't from my regular account. I had a few system freezes while connecting, and one of them reverted kppp to default settings. I am currently getting exit status 10, the ppp timeout after a few LCP packets. I have a dual-boot win98/mdk10 system with a winmodem using a free driver. There are different versions available for the driver; I will try them again, and also I had noticed a change in the past between different volume settings for the modem. It didn't connect until I turned the modem volume off! Help greatly appreciated.

A followup:

What does LAPM mean? I've seen it on other posts, and even other "parameters" on the Connect line. Sometimes my connection doesn't have that, and most of those times it fails. When it has it on there, it almost always goes through. Before, I had to add mru and mtu settings to /etc/ppp/options and I had to explicitly login through the chat script, at least I got a connection after changing these and not before.

I just love solving my own problems. Here's what to do:

1. Create a new group called "internet"
2. Put yourself and anyone else to receive internet privileges in this group.
3. Find the following files/folders in /etc and change the group/permissions recursively. The new group will be "internet" and permissions will be rw(x)rw(x)--- The owner should still be root.
The files are:
/etc/ppp (directory)
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts (directory)
anything else in /etc that seems like it is needed for your internet connection.

Hope this helps somebody! Also, check firewall settings if you can't get anywhere after you connect. Watch out for /etc/resolv.conf This file holds the DNS configuration. If you have problems, just delete it (and its backups)

I'm willing to work with anyone who is having trouble; maybe I can graduate from newbie status.