I am having trouble logging onto the internet. Upon clicking on Firefox web browser, I get the message - "Firefox can't find the server at start.ubuntu.com".
Each time I try pulling up a site, I get the same message, "Firefox can't find the server at (the site I am trying to get) .com. At one point I saw a message that my URL was unrecognized.
I have been running linux for years and now have an issue logging on. I am currently running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Lucid Lynx. I have checked my connection by connecting a laptop to my modem and I can run it with window 97 with a few glitches. I would like my Linux back, can anyone help? Ken Anderson.

Hey there Ken,

Welcome here.

Let's go one step at a time. What's the contents of /etc/resolv.conf? Can you ping your computer? Try this:

If so, try to ping the modem, possibly

And finally, ping google:

If all of that works...we'll continue with the next step...

Thor

Ubuntu has a long history of this type of thing. For a while it only seemed to happen on the *.10 releases but then from 10.04 it was happening on the *.04 releases as well. If your problem is what I think it is you will need to follow these steps which come from here

Hope this helps, let us know how you go.

1 members found this post helpful.

How did you go Ken? Did you get it working?

k3lt01: I did what you suggested and it didn't produce anything different, any other tips my friend? Ken

Did you try what Thor suggested?

Your not in offline mode are you?

k3lt01: Yes, I did what Thor suggested, I only got a response from the 1st of the 3 pings, would it help if I sent the results? I tried to email Thor from the icon in the upper left of his message, haven't received response yet... I'm rather new to this. I checked offline mode and that is not it. Another odd thing happens these days, the monitor goes dark after some time, couple hours, and the on/off button that is normally green-lit is yellow and I cannot get it on again unless I turn off processor, wait and turn on system again. Any help would be appreciated, I am currently running off a lap top w/ windows and miss my Linux. Confused in Minnesota,Ken.

Hi Ken

Don't email or PM people for help in private, ask in public so others can also help or get help from answers that you get.

Go through the process that Thor asked you to do again and post the results up in this thread. When you go to post in the thread you will see a # in the row above the box you are typing in. Click on that and you will see [ code ] [ /code ] put your information between the two ] [ . I have had to space it out so you can see what it will look like in your reply to thread box. It looks different in the finished post.

Once you have done that we can see what things are looking like and may get a better idea of what is happening.

EDIT: Just thinking, you do have the driver installed don't you? What is your hardware? Can you post the output of lspci please? and tell us what the network icon in the panel is showing. I suspect you either haven't got the driver installed or there is something like a network key missing.

Two possibilities...

- Faulty network cable
- Faulty network card

Both result in the same behaviour: ping 127.0.0.1 works, anything else (beyond the box) fails...

A new network card would mean tweaking the system to use eth1 instead of eth0, on Arch that's done in /etc/rc.conf...I think the settings are done elsewhere (but on a similar mode) on Ubuntu...

Thor

Not if he can run it with Windows as suggested in his OP.

If the driver isn't installed or installed incorrectly (or Network Manager or Wicd has shut the connection down) you will get the exact same symptoms. It will ping the machine itself but cannot ping anything outside the machine.

Ping results- Computer 127.0.0.1 gives Round trip time stats-Min 0.07, Avrg-0.07, Max-0.08. Transmission Stats- Packets Transmitted 5, Packets received 5, Successful packets 100%. Upon pinging for Modem 192.168.1.1 and Google 173.194.78.94, I receive no response.
From the terminal I also did following-
sudo gedit /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf

Search for this line... #prepend domain-name-servers 127.0.0.1; insert the following line
after that line.
prepend domain-name-servers 208.67.222.222,208.67.220.220;
I didn't make a difference.

You asked a few ?'s about my computer, help me to figure this out. How do I check to see if the driver is installed? How do I check to tell you what my hardware is? How do I obtain output of lspci? How do I check what the network icon in the panel is showing. Thank you for the time, Ken.

Lets do this one step at a time then. When you ping you open a terminal and type in ping etc. When you lspci or any other command you open a terminal and type in the command lspci or whatever command you need to type in. Hit enter and the output will come up in the terminal. Copy it into a post so we can see what you have. After you have done that we will work on the driver and network manager

Does ubuntu.com work or www.ubuntu.com work if you type it in?

Does www.start.ubuntu.com work if you type it in?

Ping is a poor test.

Use dig or nslookup for the name and see if it resolves.

Jethro: I will start with you, my friend, because the answer is shorter. You asked "Does ubuntu.com work or www.ubuntu.com work if you type it in? Does www.start.ubuntu.com work if you type it in?" I tried all three and nothing avails.
You stated "Ping is a poor test.Use dig or nslookup for the name and see if it resolves."
I typed in "dig" and here is what I got,
;<<>> DiG 9.7.0-P1<<>>
;; global options: +cmd
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached
I typed in nslookup and here is what came up (I did try several times w/ same result).
;;connection timed out; no servers could be reached

K3lt01:
I entered ping and here it is:
Usage: ping [-LRUbdfnqrvVaA] [-c count] [-i interval] [-w deadline]
[-p pattern] [-s packetsize] [-t ttl] [-I interface or address]
[-M mtu discovery hint] [-S sndbuf]
[ -T timestamp option ] [ -Q tos ] [hop1 ...] destination
I entered lspci and here it is:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82845 845 [Brookdale] Chipset Host Bridge
(rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82845 845 [Brookdale] Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 12)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801BA ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 12)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801BA IDE U100 Controller (rev 12)
00:1f.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801BA/BAM USB Controller #1 (rev 12)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801BA/BAM SMBus Controller (rev 12)
00:1f.4 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801BA/BAM USB Controller #1 (rev 12)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801BA/BAM AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 12)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Rage 128 Pro Ultra TF
02:0c.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/Tx-M [Tornado] (rev 78)
I thank you guys for your time, Ken. (ps-this last line was not part of terminal readout).

1 members found this post helpful.

The line in bold is a network card that you plug a cable into. Can you check the cable is connected properly. Can you also go into synaptic and tell me if firmware-linux-free and firmware-linux-nonfree are installed. If they are not installed this may be the problem because 3Com has drivers in both.

Also it seems as though there are bugs with this cards firmware