woody browsers not working

[john gennard <joney@clara.co.uk>]

I'm still having problems with my woody installations.
I've been trying to network three boxes at home, and think I may be making 
progress. However, when I configure ppp and try to use Lynx or KDE's 
Conqueror, neither will work. Previously these have worked 'out of the box'
(i.e. with no intervention from me), now they just appear to try connecting 
but do nothing.

There has been a recent thread about similar problems, but apparently
when using the 2.4 kernel (I'm using 2.2.20 at this stage).

If I use wvdial, the logging shows:-

-------------------
[snip]
--> Looks like a password prompt.
--> Sending: (password)
Auth successful[7f][03]@![01][01] [18][01][04][05]j[02][06]    
[05][06][0e]e[14[12][07][02][08][02]~[7f]}#@!}!}"} }8}!}$}%j}"}&} } } } 
}%}&[0e]e}4}2}'}"}(}"U=--> PPP negotiation detected.
--> Starting pppd at Mon Sep  2 16:07:12 2002
--> pid of pppd: 426
------------------

ifconfig shows:-

-----------------
ppp0      Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
          inet addr:217.158.116.89  P-t-P:217.158.114.40  Mask:255.255.255.255
          UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST  MTU:1514  Metric:1
          RX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:10
          RX bytes:217 (217.0 b)  TX bytes:208
----------------

so I assume the ppp config is good and I am connected to my ISP
(the 'clock' is definitely running).

Why cannot I browse? I've looked at 'path' and 'permissions' and things
seem correct. I can't find '/dev/ppp0', but that is the same on the boxes 
still running Potato, so I assume it's normal.

Obviously something is wrong, but I've no idea what - can someone please help 
me out.

john.