[Sheflug] Re: My First Post - Connecting Linux to the Internet

["John Cordner" <nospam [at] btinternet.com>]

Paul Miller wrote...

.. At one point I had it ringing up and connecting to the ISP they
negotiated for a few seconds and then broke the connection. I managed to
find a log file somewhere (I might even be able to find it again given
enough time) which contained a log of the login process. It said 'Terminated
by Remote Host' so I guess there was a problem with the authentication.
Compuserve is not particularly Linux friendly.

Paul

I don't use SUSE (I use RedHat) but you might want to look in
/var/log/messages for connection problems.

I also have a Compuserve account which I'm about to ditch. I never got
Compuserve connected with Linux (although have successfully connected
BTInternet, FreeServe and one or two others). The problem I think is with
the proprietary authentication used by Compuserve and a few others (AOL I
believe also use there own standard).

Most ISPs use PAP (Password Authentication Protocol) or CHAP (Challenge
Handshake Authentication Protocol) which, as far as I'm aware, are standard
protocols. Linux uses these. I doubt that you would be able to connect a
Windows machine to Compuserve/AOL without installing their software first
(I've never managed it) and I am assuming it's all down to their own
protocol.

You might want to give CompuServe a quick call or drop them an email and ask
if there's a way to connect a Linux OS to their servers. If they simply
respond with something unhelpful like "we don't support Linux", then my
recommendation would be to ditch them and sign up with someone else - it's a
hassle I know, but it may be the only way to connect Linux to an ISP.

Another problem that I had when connecting Linux to my ISP when I first
started was that I could get my modem to connect to my ISP, the log messages
would tell me that the connection was established and had not been dropped
but I wasn't able to browse anything on the web. Problem was simple to fix
when I found it; under /etc there should be a file called resolv.conf and in
there you need to add the IP address and name of a DNS (Domain Name Server)
e.g. www.btinternet.com 194.73.73.113 - I doesn't necessarily have to be the
DNS of your ISP, anyone will do. You just need to find a DNS out there on
the internet that can resolve names into machine addresses for you; once
you've found one if it can't resolve a name for you it passes it on to the
next one.

In Windows if you open up a DOS Prompt (while connected to the internet) and
type ping www.yahoo.com you'll get something like this back:

Pinging www.yahoo.akadns.net [216.32.74.51] with 32

Reply from 216.32.74.51: bytes=32 time=266ms TTL=240
Reply from 216.32.74.51: bytes=32 time=275ms TTL=240
Reply from 216.32.74.51: bytes=32 time=255ms TTL=240
Reply from 216.32.74.51: bytes=32 time=255ms TTL=240

It's a good chance that 216.32.74.51 will act a DNS for your configuration.

BT Internet actually publish their DNS numbers on their web site (not that
I'm recommending BT Internet, especially after all the hassles I had with
them a while back).

I hope this has been of some use to you - don't give up with it, there's a
lot of good software out there for Linux and 99% of it is free. Compared to
Windows it's a difficult system to learn but worth it in the end.

Good Luck

John

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