[PLUG] Newbie's first question - modem will ftp, but not http

[George Langford <amenex@amenex.com>]

Hello PLUG Members !

First, a little background:

Got a Linux-In-A-Box PC from a California vendor, configured 
already, except that the CD-R/W drive wasn't connected to the 
Primary Slave IDE port in the BIOS; it would read the Linux 
distribution disk if I rebooted with the disk in place (but 
not yet mounted), but it wouldn't read anything at all when 
the PC was up & running.  And I could not mount it.  Fixed 
that; Hardware Browser was especially helpful in discovering 
what was wrong there.  Now at least I can _read_ CD-ROM's 
(haven't tried to burn a CD-R yet).

A different problem remains:

I can connect to my ISP and then use an ftp client to access the 
server on which my webpage (amenex.com) resides; if I dared at 
this point, I could even upload stuff.  I can also dial up my wife's 
ISP (Earthlink) and still get to the amenex.com server on Voicenet,
so Internet communications through the modem work OK.

What I haven't figured out is how to reach any www addresses, 
such as the one on which my mail resides (also Voicenet, but a 
dynamically selected server rather than the fixed one for 
amenex.com).  Even Google is unreachable; all return a "server 
not found" message.

I've configured Kppp and my Netscape Preferences identically
to the ones on my W98 machine (running Netscape 4.7); the Linux 
PC is running Linux 7.2 and Netscape 4.78.

Once, when I ran "kppp &" in Terminal mode, I got an error
message that "ppp0 can't be found"  when I tried to access a
www site from Terminal.  That's the only clue that I can offer 
from the various logs I've read.

Summary:
None of the various browsers that are in the machine can access
any www sites; but with the ftp clients, I can do useful work.

Thanks for considering this.

George Langford
amenex@amenex.com
http://www.amenex.com/
http://www.georgesbasement.com/

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