I'm unsure about what's wrong in my software setup for my wired DSL connection with my desktop tower-- I can't go to any website nor use apt-get even though Knemo and the panel icon say I'm connected to the Internet. My distro in one computer is sidux (version Mopoc)-- this is the distro that can't connect to the net; in my other computer my distro is MEPIS 8.5 which always connects to the net with the same wired DSL modem, a working wired Motorola DSL modem from my ISP, AT&T-Yahoo. When I want my MEPIS computer to be online I just change the ethernet wire plugged into the modem. [Both desktop towers stand together on a table.]

My ISP (AT&T-Yahoo) won't help me because they only help Windows users. [I only have and use Linux--> MEPIS and sidux.]

With sidux, I have ceni to configure the network card which ceni says is a tg3 Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5702X gigabit. With ceni, I pick DHCP but don't know, for the class box, if I should pick "allow-hotplug (removable devices)", or "auto (built-in devices), or "manual". I also don't know what goes in "DNS search" box and what goes in the "DNS Nameservers" box. [With sidux, I also have pppoe-config but I think I'm supposed to use ceni because AT&T at least told me that the pppoe has already been setup inside the Motorola modem.]

At www.dnsserverlist.org, I'm told that for my IP, the top DNS servers are 129.250.48.146 and 156.154.70.22. Are these the two strings that go in the "DNS Nameservers" box of ceni? I know these numbers change and I believe they translate the name of a website into the string of numbers for that website. Yes?

I have to ask all this here because there's really no good, detailed help for ceni in the sidux manual. [I had an older version of sidux successfully connected to this AT&T-supplied Motorola DSL modem in the near past, but then I got this newer version of sidux.] Also, man ceni really has no useful info.


Thanks

Yes, you need to have a domain name server accessible to be able to look up domain names and translate those into IPs. Without this, although you may have access to the internet, you won't be able to do anything very useful. Test by using dig: $ dig www.yahoo.com, that should return something like

; <<>> DiG 9.2.1 <<>> www.yahoo.com
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 18101
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 3, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.yahoo.com. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.yahoo.com. 300 IN CNAME fp.wg1.b.yahoo.com.
fp.wg1.b.yahoo.com. 60 IN CNAME any-fp.wa1.b.yahoo.com.
any-fp.wa1.b.yahoo.com. 60 IN A 98.137.149.56

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
wa1.b.yahoo.com. 300 IN NS yf1.yahoo.com.
wa1.b.yahoo.com. 300 IN NS yf2.yahoo.com.

;; Query time: 898 msec
;; SERVER: 10.0.1.1#53(10.0.1.1)
;; WHEN: Mon Apr 5 12:02:16 2010
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 131

If you don't get an ANSWER section you have a problem with your DNS settings. DHCP has the capability to fill these in automatically, but you may need to do it manually.

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Thanks for your help bakdong! I fixed the problem with ceni and now all seems to be well. I can go to websites and apt-get works too.

:-D