michapma, closetgeek, or anyone:

Can anyone see anything in any of the various requested results above that might help resolve this problem? TIA

Some obvious questions that should already have occured to me: What kind of network device and network connection does this machine have? An ethernet card connected to a broadband modem? Local Area Network?

Are you the system administrator for this office network? Is there someone else who can provide you with more help or information?

"If the command succeeds quickly, listing Google's IPs, then you're not having general network connectivity trouble." I'd say you're not having general network connectivity trouble. That's one more link in the chain.


As for traceroute, maybe it is not installed by default in Ubuntu (could be classified as a "power-user" tool and deemed unnecessary for most users). See if this helps: If you see messages indicating it's being installed, you should be able to use it afterward.


Not really yet.


But there were other ideas posted that haven't been reported back on yet. Other things that were suggested:
* Have you tried comparing the performance of another browser (Epiphany)?
* Have you looked at proxy settings?
* Have you disabled IPV6 for Firefox?


On a side note, some of my suggestions were just meant to give you resources to inform yourself with. You will help yourself if you put on your detective's hat and look for answers to some questions.

For example, Google tells me that the answer to can be found here:
System>Adminstration>Device Manager

I don't mean to criticize, it's just that you'll find answers to some questions faster yourself than waiting on someone to do it for you. Ubuntu has some pretty good documentation:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community
http://doc.ubuntu.com/
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Dapper


You may especially be interested in:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NetworkDevices
and
http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Dapper#Networking

An ethernet card connected to a switch in a Local Area Network. The LAN is one of two branches from a router fed by a microwave broadband feed. (The other branch is a WiFi system for customers of the business)

I am, errrmmm...., the system administrator for this office network. (As you can see, I am a beginner and unfortunately there is no one in this little town who can provide help or information.)

Good news regarding general network connectivity.

Will try: "sudo apt-get install traceroute[/code]" when I get to the office.

I had disabled IPv6 in Firefox and would say that helped somewhat. I look forward to getting my Ubuntu upgraded to 6.06 and bringing Firefox up to a later version which I strongly suspect will also be very helpful. I got started yesterday on finding another browser, but got interrupted and lost the tread - will pursue that again today.

I have heard the term "proxy" many times, but candidly I really don't understand where a proxy is, much less how to examine proxy settings. I know that a proxy acts to examine outgoing requests to see if it can provide the required page from its cache, and or to "filter" user activity, but exactly where is it? I assume is must be in the router (or maybe at the ISP or possibly in the OS where it wraps the browser)? Is there something that I can interrogate in Ubuntu (or elsewhere) and post that will help shed light on the settings and help me learn about settings?

Thank you very much for your kind suggestion regarding research. You probably cannot tell it, but I research every suggestion received to better understand it and to learn how to implement it. (Without intending this as criticism, some of the suggestions in forums, even beginner forums, are along the lines of "Have you tried XYZ", without any instruction as to how to do it, so the person with the problem must either research it or ask for instruction (or both, in my case usually when the answer is not obtained through research within a reasonable length of time.)) For example, I spent a lot of time googling proxy in various contexts and found lots of definitions and references without being much the wiser as to where it actually is.

I knew about System>Adminstration>Device Manager, which of course is enormously detailed, but much of what it reveals is listed as "unknown device". What I was hoping is that there are tools like SysoftSandra or Karen's Computer Profiler in Windoze, but for Linux and, most importantly, which forum members can recommend.

Constructive criticism is always welcome, actually valued, with me. I believe that there must be much good info in the Ubuntu documentation, but I rarely find what I am looking for there. It is both time consuming and difficult, often cryptic, and I usually find what I am looking for elsewhere while I am also looking in Ubuntu. (Here is a line from the Local Area Network section from one of the URL's you provided:

I asked him and he threw a stale doughnut at me . Anyway, no help to me.)

You have been enormously responsive in this quest and I hope your patience holds til we get it fixed. Thanks again.

All Linux distros have a command line device lister. Open a terminal and type "sudo lspci" (without the quotes of course). That should give you a list of your hardware.

In a console, type "man lspci" for switches to add to the command to give you more or less output.

Is just the network slow or the pc is generally slow I mean does copying files from one location to another take more than usual time? if yes then please post lspci and lsusb also.

XavierP and lockpicker-thanks for yours and will try the lister when I get to the office.

The computer is reasonably fast except for Internet related activity. As mentioned above, removing IPv6 from Firefox helped, but Thunderbird is agonizingly slow. It may well be that upgrading to 6.06 will make the problem disappear.

For info, here is list from lspci:

Password:
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP (different version?) (r ev c1)
0000:00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 1 (rev c1)
0000:00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 4 (rev c1)
0000:00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 3 (rev c1)
0000:00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 2 (rev c1)
0000:00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Memory Controller 5 (rev c1)
0000:00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0080 (rev a3)
0000:00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0084 (rev a1)
0000:00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0087 (rev a1)
0000:00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0087 (rev a1)
0000:00:02.2 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0088 (rev a2)
0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 008 a (rev a1)
0000:00:08.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 008b (rev a3)
0000:00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 0085 (rev a3)
0000:00:0b.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 008e (rev a3)
0000:00:1e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP (rev c1)
0000:01:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C /8139C+ (rev 10)
0000:02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 400 0 AGP 8x] (rev c1)

and lsusb:

before plugging in a USB memory device:

Bus 003 Device 002: ID 04a7:022c Visioneer
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 03f0:6204 Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 5150c
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

and after:

Bus 003 Device 002: ID 04a7:022c Visioneer
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 04e8:0100 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 03f0:6204 Hewlett-Packard DeskJet 5150c
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

It seems that the (Kingston) USB device is listed as Bus 2, Dev 4 (and that it is manufactured by Samsung)

However it does not show up on the desktop?????

Here is the result of "cat /etc/fstab"

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 ro,user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0

and "dmesg | grep SCSI"

SCSI subsystem initialized
scsi2 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 01 CCS
SCSI device sda: 251904 512-byte hdwr sectors (129 MB)
SCSI device sda: 251904 512-byte hdwr sectors (129 MB)
scsi3 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 01 CCS
SCSI device sda: 251904 512-byte hdwr sectors (129 MB)
SCSI device sda: 251904 512-byte hdwr sectors (129 MB)
scsi4 : SCSI emulation for USB Mass Storage devices
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 01 CCS
SCSI device sda: 251904 512-byte hdwr sectors (129 MB)
SCSI device sda: 251904 512-byte hdwr sectors (129 MB)

If I understand this the USB device is now sda. How do I get it mounted so that it will show up on the desktop? TIA

P.S. Can I just unplug the USB device without somehow "disconnecting" (like the Stop Device under Windoze)?

You should unmount the mounted usb device before unplugging it otherwise there is a possibility of corrupting the device's filesystem.
And as far as the slow behaviour is concerned, your lspci explains most of it

Looks like your IDE interface is not recognized properly, that means most probably your DMA would also not be workin, that could definetly be slowing down things!! try to get that workin and that should help.

lockpicker, Thanks for yours.

In your (or anyone's) opinion, is the USB memory stick actually "mounted" (and if so, why doesn't it show on the GUI desktop?)

And, if it is, how do I unmount it since I don't know how to access it. (I googled this but can't find anything relevant).

FI, this computer has an NVidia Nforce2 Ultra 400 + MCPS video card. Might be the "Unknown device 0085 and 008e (rev a3)"?

well if you you can access your usb-storage device by directly going to the directory you mounted that into
e.g. if you used something like "mount -t /dev/sda /mnt/flash" to mount your drive then you can move to /mnt/flash and access it. as far as an icon in the GUI is concerned, a simple script could be made for that but why to take the pain!!
And actually mounting is just the procedure of attaching your external device's filesystem to some location on your resident filesystem ( Somewhat like adding a branch to an existing tree) and unmounting is detaching it!

well forgot to mention, it seems you are unable to mount the device in the first place. for that you can check tail /var/log/messages for the getting to know the file to which your device is associated
eg if you find that the device is being attached as sda then you could mount it using

mount -t <filesystem here> /dev/sda /mnt/<directory to which the device is to be mounted>

e.g. mount -t vfat /dev/sda /mnt/flash

lockpicker,

Thanks for this info. Will try this when I get to Office and report results back here.