This is rather non-technical but may be of interest to a regular computer user who wants to throw off the M$ shackles. For completeness, I have a crappy Compaq Presario (660 MHz, 312 MB RAM, 40 GB hard disk) that I Dual-Boot Redhat 7.2 with the even crappier Windows ME.

I decided to sign up for Comcast cable Internet and had to figure out how to get it to work since they don't support Linux and Mozilla wouldn't connect to any sites. After searching for help, I found two tidbits that put me in the right direction. One showed me the /sbin/ifconfig command which showed me that the Linux OS and cable mode were communicating just fine. The other was the idea that to reach the comcast authentication web site I needed to change Mozilla's preferences to include an HTTP Proxy web site and port, and an SSL Proxy web site and port (actually I don't know if I needed both but the thread I read said to put the same info in both so I did and it didn't hurt). One quick call to Comcast and after they said that they don't support Linux they mentioned that it might be a good idea to put the following web site into the HTTP Proxy "sas.r5.attbi.com" with a Port number of 8000. So I did that ("Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Proxies and click Manual Proxy Settings" and put it in the SSL Proxy locations as well). After shutting down & restarting Mozilla, Voila! I was able to register with Comcast and activate my account.

Unfortunately, I couldn't go anywhere after that, so the rest of the story (from a second very short call to Comcast) is that after you're registered go back into the proxy preferences and set them to Direct Connection (i.e., de-activate the HTTP and SSL Proxy sites you just put in). That worked for me and, as should be evident by the high level of technical detail in this post, if it could work for me it could work for anyone. Note I'm not saying that my Internet speed etc. is all optimized and tuned, I'm just saying that the Linux system is darn good out of the box but there are some subtleties that are hard to learn about.

The only questionable development in this success story is that I can't print when the Cable modem is active (i.e., I have to power down, disconnect the cable modem and reboot). I guess that has to do with some interaction that the cable modem has with lpd but I haven't figured that connection out yet - I'm still basking in the "glory" from today's earlier success.

Thanks for listening and sharing those thoughts and questions and successes!

Are your modem and your printer both USB? I suspect they are. Probably your printer setup is using USB1 and so is your cable modem. If you shut down your cable modem, then the printer is the only USB device left and it becomes USB1 (when the modem is on it's USB2). I might not be exactly correct with the device numbers, but I suspect that's your problem in a nutshell.

By the way, congrats on convincing your idiot ISP that Linux can work with their service (there's nothing I hate more than tech support that says "we don't support that" when all you need is the proper generic settings and it will work on ANY platform).

if you have more than one nic in your box you will need to configure them each individulaly with static ip addresses EXCEPT the nic attatched with the modem.

Thanks for the responses.

I only have one nic in the machine so I don't have to worry about that subtlety - but, thanks a lot for the insight 'cause I wouldn't have known about that trap.

As far as the devices being USB, they are but the printer is connected via a (what seems to me) standard printer type plug, not a USB connector. The printer does not show up on the list of USB devices in the KDE control center. When I looked at the System>printing manager in the control center, the HP 712C was shown to be using the "Generivc UNIX LPD print system". I tried printing a test page and received the following error message:

"Catastrophe!

A print error occurred. Error message received from system:

/usr/bin/lpr -P 'HP_Deskjet_712C' -#1'
/usr/share/apps/kdeprint/testprint.ps: execution failed with message:

Get_local_host hostname 'x1-....(id assigned by Comcast)...' bad"

I looked in the file testprint.ps but couldn't find any instance of it looking for a hostname so I infer that the problem is in lpr somewhere, but I couldn't open that (sensibly) in PICO or vi (I guess it's a binary file).

If anyone has any ideas I'd sure appreciate any suggestions. In the meantime, I'll be searching the web for any insight on why lpr might be having a problem like this.

Just a final word on the eth0 and lpd problem I mentioned in my second post above. By searching the forums I found two prior posts that were "exactly" the same issue (that's exactly to someone who doesn't know much about Linux!). Unfortunately I got alittle carried away and implemented both suggested fixes (i.e., I added "127.0.0.1 new_hostname_from_comcast" in /etc/hosts AND I added "HOSTNAME= new_hostname_from_comcast" in /etc/sysconfig/network). Since I didn't maintain my cool scientific impartiality (hey successes are few and far between for a newbie), I don't know which one did the trick or if both were needed. I did notice that sendmail took a long time to start up during the reboot so I'll be watching that. Anyway, for this little insignificant issue, all's well that ends wll (or pretty well anyway). Thanks again to those who responded!

I'm surprised and encouraged to hear that you were able to register
directly on the web through Mozilla. When I registered my NIC with insightbb.com last summer I could get no more than a blank white page through Mozilla, and I was fortunate that I had a very patient tech person on the other end. Somehow or another they managed to get a legitiimate IP assigned to me--but not without getting the same "we don't support Linux!" line in the course of the session.

Has anyone else had problems with Mozilla while setting up a cable internet account? I would sure hate to go through that again if I have to reregister a different machine!

Might be a possible fix for me, even though I'm on a different ISP(Mimer), but then again they support Linux. >_>

But I think my problem is in the gateway anyway.