I have set up a basic install of slackware on an old pII (no gnome, no kde - using windowmaker) & am connecting to the net via pppd.

It connects ok & shows IP addresses, ping is succesful, but when I try a browser (netscape or lynx) they are unable to load any sites.

This is not a permissions issue as this does not work as root.

I have read manuals, googled, reconfigured, re -installed with different settings etc.

Any help or ideas welcome please

have you added the nameserver in /etc/resolv.conf?

There is a nameserver IP address in there - presumably put there by the pppsetup routine as I didn't configure it manually.

Have you run netconfig and set up the loopback modem device?

sorry - the answer is yes - all further suggestions v welcome .

I know the hardware works OK as well as if I install KDE it works fine. The object of my little project was to run this machine on minimal software to get that 'greased lightning' performance out of it (& learn more about Linux in the process).

it's much easier if you try to compile wvdial and use it, that way it can autodetect all your nameserver information rather than installing KPPP to get the nameservers from your ISP. if you're having some problems with compiling wvdial in general, try to disable stuff when compiling wvstreams first. hope this helps.

You can, for instance, get a response from

"ping yahoo.com"

but not

"lynx yahoo.com" ?

Thanks for all the input so far
1) WVdial doesn't work either, same problem. (for the record you need to configure wvstreams with ./configure --prefix=/usr)
2) Ping only works if I use the numerical IP addresses that ppp or wvdial throw up. If i use ping yahoo.com or lynx yahoo.com it doesn't work.
I suspect the problem is with resolv.conf . I have found out the nameserver is the setup routines guess - My ISP uses dynamic addresses (ie - it is never the same twice!). I have tried 0.0.0.0 as the nameserver but it won't even attempt that.
The one ray of hope is that the excellent mini live distro "Puppy Linux" uses wvdial & I have got that working with my ISP, so it is possible. I have tried copying settings across but to no avail.
Back to the manuals ;0)

A solution of sorts - I've installed Webmin - a linux administration tool that works through your web browser. It looks like this has added two addresses to my /etc/resolv.conf & a couple of lines to /etc/wvdial.conf (Stupid Mode = Off & Modem Ty pe = analog modem). It still uses wvdial (I will check & see if wvdial works on it's own now or if it still needs to be run through webmin)

A rather sweet solution as I had intended to use webmin (as well as the excellent Gentoo file manager) to work the system.

Thanks for the help chaps

Edit:WVdial won't work by itself but the ppp-go command does. I would imagine that the lines in /etc/resolv.config did the trick.

http://home.earthlink.net/~gnashley/ispsetup/ispsetup
Try this script.
It's a version of pppsetup that I hacked for using dynamic DNS. it only works for pap though.
But you could make dynamic DNS work with pppsetup also.
just add the line
usepeerdns
to /etc/ppp/options.
then
rm /etc/resolv.conf
ln -s /etc/ppp/resolv.conf
then uncomment the ping section in /etc/ppp/ip-up
Study the parts of the script where it writes /etc/ppp/options, /etc/ppp/ip-up, /etc/ppp/ip-down to see how it works different from pppsetup

Thanks for all your effort. I can't use your script at the mo because my ISP uses chap but I have downloaded it for future reference; Shell scripting is something else I need to get up to speed on.