Re: connecting to internet

[Mark Wagnon <mwagnon1@home.com>]

Steve Winston wrote:
> 
> I am a newbie and have just installed Debian. I need to connect to 
> a website to download an upgrade to xfree86. I put the url in my
> sources list, but when I try apt-update, the response I get is
> that the website doesn't exist. I have checked it and it exists.
> My ppp connection to my isp is working ok. but I can't get to the
> website. Lynx doesn't connect to anything although I have put a 
> url in lynx.cfg. I have tried ncftp, but no hosts are recognized
> although I use them in with other distributions. Any
> recommendations? I am using Debian Gnu/linux that is publish by
> Oreilly. System is asus p5a mo-board, amd k6-2 400 cpu, 128 mb
> ram. debian shares a drive with win98.

You say that your connection is okay, that it's up? That's the first
thing to rule out. I haven't set up a PPP connection in ages, so I
really don't remember what needs to be running for PPP. You might
want to try:

  ps aux | grep pppd

to see if the daemon is running when you start your session. Can you
ping other sites? Try ping the Debian home page like so:

  ping www.debian.org

you should get some output that looks like this:

  PING www.debian.org (209.81.8.242): 56 data bytes
  64 bytes from 209.81.8.242: icmp_seq=0 ttl=55 time=51.5 ms
  64 bytes from 209.81.8.242: icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=171.9 ms

and on and on. Hit <ctrl-c> to stop it. If you don't and you do have
your connection up, try pinging the IP address like so:

  ping 209.81.8.242

Again, you should see similar output. If this works then you
probably need to add the IP addresses of you DNSs to your
/etc/resolv.conf file.

If it turns out you haven't configured ppp correctly, I'd search
through the archives on ppp for a quicker start.

Just a couple of pointers. You might want to set your mail client to
wrap outgoing messages to a line length around 70 characters. It
makes it easier to read. Also, try to post portions of relevant
config files to help others help you better. Doing so lets us see
what you've done to figure it out, and to see if you made a typo or
something.

That's it, hope I was of some help, and welcome to Debian!
-- 
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 ) Mark Wagnon      ) mwagnon1@home.com      )
(  Chula Vista, CA (  wagnon@rohan.sdsu.edu (
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