Don't know how to connect to Internet - very ignorant!
 

Hi, all,

I'm very new to Linux and am doing everything trial and error. I'm trying to connect to the internet, but am obviously minus a huge chunk of knowlege.

I've got a dial-up number and an account name (and of course, password). That's all I'm certain of. Oh, and the ISP is MSN.

I've tried using minicom to just dial in, and the connection drops before I can start up Netscape or use lynx or connect to anything. (Did I say I was -really- new?). So I tried eznet. That seems to dial and connect, but nothing else works, again no lynx, netscape, etc.

Do I need something in my hosts table? I don't have an IP address that I know of, it's just my machine trying to dial out.

Do I need to know the IP address or DNS of my ISP? If so, where should this go? Does that go in /etc/hosts?

I've read the docs that came with my system, but they seem to skip right over the part where you determine your own IP address, and how to actually make your ISP run in the background for use by Netscape, ftp, etc.

Thank you all in advance for any help with this.

Lexia

:confused:

Forgot to post the distribution!

Red Hat 7.0 Guiness
Kernel 2.2.16-22 on i686

TIA,

Lexia

Don't know how to connect to Internet - very ignorant!
 

Note from years later - this is why people go back to Windows. Note the no reply, no help.

It's unfortunate that your original post didn't receive any responses. A couple things to consider however:

1. Posting a question does not guarantee an answer will be provided, or that the problem will be solved. Please keep in mind that LQ is and has always been a 100% volunteer effort, with everyone here donating part of their spare time trying to help out fellow Linux users. I would guess that the most likely reason your post didn't get a response was probably just because not enough people happened to be online when you posted it. LQ was much smaller in 2003 than it is today, and there were far fewer eyeballs on each thread than there are now.

2. Given that you didn't post any followups to your original question (apart from listing your distro) most people probably assumed that you figured out the answer on your own. Had you posted back a day or two later with a followup post along the lines of "Still haven't solved it, does anyone have suggestions?" your thread would have received a second round of exposure. I can understand that you might feel as though LQ didn't come through for you on this thread, but it would be also fair to say that you didn't do anything to indicate that you were still actively seeking an answer.

Hopefully you were able to resolve the issue. Welcome back.