Hello,

I'm having trouble browsing the web Suse Linux 6.2 on Gateway 2000 Pentium I/ 100Mhz stand-alone system. 49MB RAM. 14400 Sportster ISA modem. dial-up. using KPPP. /dev/ttyS2. Using setserial /dev/ttyS2 ^fourport autoconfig auto_irq spd_normal. have to run setserial commands twice and execute KPPP twice, then modem connects to ISP. Can ping dynamic IP address given successfully. Computer doesn't have NIC card, so have loopback enables 127.0.0.1. Modem is locked in KPPP. Noauth command is enabled for root (KPPP). Have tried taking it out and dialing up. Same result. Using Netscape Navigator version (which comes with distro), I cannot connect to any hosts on the web. Error message "

Warning: the following hosts are unknown:

home.netscape.com
home6.netscape.com
internic.net

This means that some or all hosts will be unreachable.

Perhaps there is a problem with your name server? If your site must use a non-root name server, you need to set the $SOCKS_NS environment variable to point to the appropriate name server. IT may (or may not) be necessary to set this variable, or the SOCKS host reference, to the IP address of the host in question rather than it's name.

Consult your system administrator.

I didn't think I needed a name server set up on a stand-alone. I put Damn Small Linux on the system and the ISA modem couldn't even get a dynamic IP address from ISP. Damn SMall linux works great on external modem on another system.

Well that's about it. everything worked fine with Windows 95, but the machine just sat in a corner. I wanted to find something that would make using it interesting again. I guess I found that something, didn't I.

Can anyone help me figure this one out?

Thanks.

First the ISA modem.

Alot of Internal modems do not work with Linux, this is because they contain the very minimum of components and get Microsoft to do most of the work. Therefore you are generally much better off with an external modem (all the required parts are there).

Next the External modem.

Connect to your ISP with the modem and then try pinging 66.102.11.99 (www.google.com)

This will tell you if you can connect to the internet. I would imagine you are having a problem with DNS. The internet is afterall a collection of servers on a (very) large network. As such you need to know how to find the specific machines that you want to speak to.

If you're using a dial-up connection to an ISP you need to add their DNS server to your /etc/resolv.conf file.

You should be able to find your ISP's DNS server address from their website. EG. for zoom.co.uk there should be the following entry:

nameserver 212.135.1.36

Thanks Dissillusionist,

Can't ping 66.102.11.99 (www.google.com). You've gotten me on the right track, however I had to input the nameserver primary and secondary addresses for my ISP into /etc/rc.config because Yast configures the /etc/resolve.conf file and then executes the /etc/rc.config file. It indicated for this distro I shouldn't configure it. I contacted my ISP and am awainting response on what the domain list is, so I can feed it to Yast. My ISP does support Linux, so that's a hurdle I won't have to worry about.

We'll see what we see. Believe it or not, this is the first ISA modem I've had trouble configuring in Mepis or Damn Small Linux. It's not a Winmodem, so I'm surprised. But it is a 1996 model.

Thanks for the direction. I'll let you know if I run into any other issues.