hello everybody

let's get to business *g*
either i've overseen something here, or this could get tricky.

following set-up:

suse 10.0 running on a fairly old pentium III desktop (mini-tower)

internet connection using a umts-card through a pci to pcmcia interface.

the card tells me it's a merlin u630 when i send it an ATI command
the interface is also correctly recognised as a ricoh co ltd rl5c475

when i switch the computer on and let it boot in linux, the card lights up and starts flashing blue twice a second. according to the manual this means:

the card is working and has recognised that a umts net is available

i configure kppp and click on connect, the card lights up constant blue. this means the card is booked in to the umts net.

everything up to this point has been good, hasn't it?

and it's going to stay good for the next two lines...

i try

ping 64.233.167.147

the result comes back

so many packets sent, all received 0% loss (hoorah!)

now i try

ping www .google.com

the result comes back

so many packets sent, all received 0% loss (hoorah and yippee!)

now i open my web-browser and try to go to www .google.com (or whatever)

the address gets recognised (hoorah, yippee and frabjous)

then it stops. doesn't download the webpage. bloody annoying.

i recorded the last attempt using ethereal and am quite confused as to what could be going wrong. after about a minute comes a timeout...

but why?

if anybody has an answer, i would be forever, grovellingly in your debt... (it's been a long day already)

<modified>

before i forget, i've also tried using

ifconfig ppp0 mtu ****

to change the packet size... it doesn't help.

perhaps you need to use a proxy?
look at the page of the provider of your umts connection!

would surprise me, but i'll give it a try

the card works almost fine under windows btw (every now and then the connection breaks apart, but i think that's got something to do with the net quality...)

a pity. you know, the more i thought about the idea of a proxy, the better it seemed, but it wasn't it

in case it helps, here are a couple of sample files, the error messages of kppp and the messages of ppp:

>kppp
Opener: received SetSecret
Opener: received OpenLock

Opener: received OpenDevice
Opener: received ExecPPPDaemon
In parent: pppd pid 5878
Opener: received OpenResolv
Couldn't find interface ppp0: Kein passendes Gerät gefunden
Kernel supports ppp alright.
Opener: received RemoveSecret
Opener: received RemoveSecret
Opener: received KillPPPDaemon
In killpppd(): Sending SIGTERM to 5878
Opener: received RemoveSecret
Opener: received RemoveSecret
Opener: received OpenResolv
Opener: received OpenResolv
Opener: received RemoveLock
It was pppd that died
pppd exited with return value 5
Sending 5874 a SIGUSR1


and the messages in /var/log/messages:

Dec 13 19:45:34 linux pppd[5878]: Plugin passwordfd.so loaded.
Dec 13 19:45:34 linux pppd[5878]: pppd 2.4.3 started by howie, uid 1000
Dec 13 19:45:34 linux pppd[5878]: Using interface ppp0
Dec 13 19:45:34 linux pppd[5878]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ttyS1
Dec 13 19:45:34 linux pppd[5878]: CHAP authentication succeeded
Dec 13 19:45:39 linux pppd[5878]: Could not determine remote IP address: defaulting to 10.64.64.64
Dec 13 19:45:39 linux pppd[5878]: local IP address 10.227.196.72
Dec 13 19:45:39 linux pppd[5878]: remote IP address 10.64.64.64
Dec 13 19:45:39 linux ifup: No configuration found for ppp0
Dec 13 19:45:40 linux pppd[5878]: Script /etc/ppp/ip-up finished (pid 5903), status = 0x0
Dec 13 19:45:45 linux poll.tcpip: Checking for network time protocol daemon (NTPD): ..unused
Dec 13 19:45:45 linux ip-up: sendmail: warning: inet_protocols: IPv6 support is disabled: Address family not supported by protocol
Dec 13 19:45:45 linux ip-up: sendmail: warning: inet_protocols: configuring for IPv4 support only
Dec 13 19:45:45 linux ip-up: sendmail: fatal: config variable inet_interfaces: host not found: ::1
Dec 13 19:46:01 linux pppd[5878]: Terminating on signal 15
Dec 13 19:46:01 linux pppd[5878]: Connect time 0.4 minutes.
Dec 13 19:46:01 linux pppd[5878]: Sent 1231 bytes, received 423 bytes.
Dec 13 19:46:01 linux pppd[5878]: Connection terminated.
Dec 13 19:46:01 linux pppd[5878]: Script /etc/ppp/ip-down finished (pid 5965), status = 0x0
Dec 13 19:46:01 linux pppd[5878]: Exit.
Dec 13 19:46:02 linux ifdown: No configuration found for ppp0
Dec 13 19:46:02 linux ifdown: Nevertheless the interface will be shut down.

------------

the only thing which really worries me is 'no configuration found for ppp0'.

any suggestions would be cool

hi
did you try browsing the net with different browsers?

also a good idea fr_laz
have only got konqueror and firefox installed, and neither of them work...

that's strange, it looks like only web traffic is blocked, since you told you could ping google, it means that both ping and dns work...
could you try this: "telnet mx.free.fr 25" to try to set up a SMTP connection (the server is a french ISP mailserver). You should have a greeting message like:
if you have the above banner, then i think that only web traffic is blocked, in which case the proxy option proposed by waguner could be the solution... you can check your IE settings to see if it uses a proxy or not (nb. i dont think automatically detect proxy settings is enable by default in firefox...)

okay, i'm back

here the worryingly positive result:

howie@linux:~> telnet mx.free.fr 25
Trying 212.27.42.22...
Connected to mx.free.fr.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mrelay5-1.free.fr ESMTP
^]
502 unimplemented (#5.5.1)
quit
221 mrelay5-1.free.fr
Connection closed by foreign host.
howie@linux:~>


which all looks rather good (although i didn't try to do anything unusual, and it took quite a while to build up the connection, about 10s if that's of interest).

which leaves me with the browser problem.

on windows i use firefox too, btw. and i checked it on about:config and the proxy is also switched off here...

so as of this moment, i have officially run out of suggestions...

on a positive note, the lartc.org/howto page seems cool and very informative. as soon as i have a spare oo, week, i'll have a look at it

This could be a dns issue. I would check out your /etc/resov.conf file.
Make sure you have something like
nameserver xxx.xx.xx.xx in there. Also try going to 72.14.207.99 (google's ip) in your browser. If google comes up, then your name resolution is not working properly.

Hope that helps

already done it
i can

ping www. google.com

and it works a treat. i can also enter the ip-address into firefox or konqueror and it doesn't do anything

so the dns appears to work...

woo-hoo!!! yee-hee!!! hoorah!!! it works! es funktioniert!
i obviously hadn't reduced the maximum packet size down enough, i just tried ifconfig ppp0 mtu 440

and it worked!! it was that easy!!

yippee!!!

euphorie is a positive thing many thanks for your suggestions and comments

howie