glad that you were able to work things out

hmm maybe do a new adsl-setup and a reboot using adsl-start in your rc.local file please post if it worked

I already have adsl-start in my rc.local on suggestion from you earlier. Rebooting hasn't helped. My adsl-setup is like the most basic thing in the world and has been with Slack so far. After trying it like 10x, I figure that isn't the problem. Thanks for the suggestions though.
I just spent the last hour or 2 getting Evolution installed w/out using Dropline so I guess it's time to get back to the net problem . I just have to have my bread and butter utils installed and Evolution is high on the list.
I can use it from a terminal as root

yea but its not good to use evolution or any other internet program from root because it can kill your pc in many ways i mean attackers have a easy job ...

Yea, I know. But at the moment, what choice do I have? Use windows?

Can you friggin' believe that this thread has been viewed almost 200 times and no one has just said, "oh yea. I had that problem. You just do this---"??

Just out of curiosity, have you tried running adsl-start like the following:

DEBUG=1 /usr/sbin/adsl-start

and check the output debug log under /tmp/pppoe-debug-XX (where XX is a random number) to give you an idea of why exactly adsl-start is failing?

Maybe that could help you.

GL

adsl-start is not failing. I can connect to the internet no problem. I just can only make use of the internet as root. This is unreal. See why this problem is so hard to solve? Because there is no way to explain it. I have searched the absolute piss out of google, and I find the same thing everywhere. Finding proper keywords for this particular issue is a complete bastard. I even see people with the same issue as mine, trying to get the same point across, and they are getting the same type of answers I am: "adsl-start can only be ran as root", "try changing permissions for the connection script". Trouble is, I am connected just fine. I am even using the connection. But, Mozilla, Evolution, Pan, GnomeICU, MozillaFirebird, while they will execute as user, they will not access the internet as user. GnomeICU will timeout, the browers will say "page not found" and Pan does nothing. Run them as root and they do as they are supposed to. Try to find 3 or 4 good keywords for that issue.

Thanks for replying though. I am just pretty fired up with this deal having spent like 2 full days on it and getting absolutely nowhere. I have not found one paragraph that even remotely resembles the type of issue I am dealing with here, from google, in any manual or networking guide.... I gotta get some sleep....

Have you tried looking in the google groups?

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=li...8&start=0&sa=N

and what are the permissions on /dev/ppp? (just came across this device) If you change these, does that affect your connection problem? It's ovbiously a permissions problem if you don't experience problems when working as root.

Thanks for the hookup I am sifting through those search results now and finding that other people have had this problem. Mostly with Slack as well. I always considered myself a search expert always able to find what I need, but I didn't know about 'Google Groups' usefulness till now

The answer most common so far seems to be to check permissions in the /etc/resolv.conf file. Everyone should have at least read access, but mine is rwx accross the board. I'll keep looking though.

Oh. Here's the permissions for /dev/ppp:
bash-2.05b# ls -l /dev/ppp
crw-rw---- 1 root uucp 108, 0 Mar 25 2001 /dev/ppp

Looks ok. What is the 'c' for though?

I think c means character device. Try changing the permissions on /dev/ppp to 666 and see what happens.

Edit: Also, i don't know if anyone mentioned this but the reason you can't change permissions on the FAT32 partition is because the FAT32 filesystem doesn't have permissions, so it doesn't know what you're trying to do.

Yea. No one mentioned that, but I finally realized and changed my entry in fstab to solve that problem

I changed the permissions to 666, killed and restarted the connection and it didn't help. I changed them back because I don't think 666 could be very secure. Plus, it didn't help

I have been playing around with the /etc/group file the last half hour or so on suggestion from the alt.os.slackware.news group. It hasn't solved the problem either. Im still hacking away at it.

Hope this info helps.

GL

Viewed around 75 pages from google groups. 30 from the link yapp provided, and the rest from other keyword combos. I have seen some relevant results but no solution.

I am going to go back to scouring all the network related files in etc for now.

Where's our resident networking guru's today?

UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!!!! THANKS LNXman!!! It works now. I would really like to understand why I never needed to do this before with Slackware though. But for the moment, I am happy to be past this problem

cool , and I'm getting really curious what the netconfig tool changes , because I used to run it too when I wanted to change my domain name.

edit: "file `which netconfig`" seams to tell be it's a bash script. I think I'll dive in and have a look.