I have tried using Firefox with Fedora Core 1, 3, 4, Ubuntu 5.04, and now Mepis 3.3.1 and I have the exact same problem in all distros: Firefox and Synaptic/Apt cannot connect to Internet (timed out errors) but Konqueror, Up2Date, Kweather and others connect without any delay or problem. I am connected to my ISP over aDSL and am using a Dell p-3 450 mHz processor and 512 Mb of Ram.

Any ideas?

-tammac

sounds like a proxy issue or something. can you define "connect to the internet" a little more? can you ping internet IP's? ping fqdn's?

I can connect to everywhere on the Internet using Konqueror and my email (Thunderbird) worked fine in my Fedora installations (I have not tried email with the new Mepis install.) Fiefox takes a long time (2 -3 miuntes) to load, then shows about 40% page loaded with the correct "connecting to www.logantele.com" (or ANY other URL) message in the status bar but then nothing happens for another 3 minutes and then I get the "connection timed out error" message. Synaptic and Apt load quickly (less than 20 seconds) but then both programs hang for about 3 minutes then report the same "timed out" error.

Since I have no problem connecting to anywhere using Konqueror, Thunderbird, Kweather, etc, I am not sure how this could be a proxy problem but I am open to oyur ideas & suggestions. Ping??? - how??

Thanks!

tammac

well one browser (possibly with a proxy set on it) works, another browser (possibly with a proxy set on it) doesn't... seems like a perfect candidate for a proxy. Like I said, you need to try pinging a few sites,but you don't know how to use ping?? erm... "ping some.thing.com"

Okay, I went into terminal:

john@1[~]$ ping google.com
PING google.com (216.239.37.99): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=0 ttl=242 time=68.3 ms
64 bytes from 216.239.37.99: icmp_seq=1 ttl=242 time=65.3 ms

john@1[~]$ ping bbc.com
PING bbc.com (212.58.240.121): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 212.58.240.121: icmp_seq=0 ttl=242 time=68.9 ms
64 bytes from 212.58.240.121: icmp_seq=1 ttl=242 time=69.7 ms
(this sequence seems to continue without end)

Thanks for the help so far, now what? Is this (above) what you wanted me to do?

-tammac

ok, so if you go to http://www.bbc.com firefox chokes? what is the error message? what if you go to http://212.58.240.121 ?

PROGRESS!!! :-) When I type in the domain name of any site, Firefox times out the connection. When I typed in the IP address as you suggested, it goes immediately to the sites (I tried five of them) just fine. Soooo... the issue seems to be Firefox not being able to resolve domain names? Thanks again for your help so far - now what can I do to fix the name resolve problem?

go to terminal

type vi '/etc/resolv*'

tell me what it says in the N.S spot.

He means, I think, something like this:to see what you have defined as a nameserver. (i.e., the "N.S. spot")

Okay,

john@2[~]$ cat /etc/resolv.conf | grep nameserver
nameserver 10.0.0.2

I noticed that when I try to update using apt-get or synaptic, every repository it attempts to connect to is 1.0.0.0 hence the "timed out" and "unable to connect to xxx.xxx" error messages.

-tammac

Try adding different nameservers. Firefox tends to timeout if the nameserver isn't working proeprly. If you can connect using the IP address but not the url then the problem is a DNS issue with the nameserver.

See "Summary of Can't Connect/timeout Solutions"
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=258042
for more help.

Okay, I shall read the link you posted and see what happens. I am still VERY puzzled as to why Konqueror works just fine every time but apt, firefox, others do not ever resolve names. I did apt-get using IP addresses instead of domain names and I am in the progress of updating my system for the first time. Yea!!! :-)

I thank you again for your help and that of the others and I will continue to try things when I return tomorrow.

-tammac