Hate to give up

[Paul Johnson]

On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 5:08 PM, John Heinen <hensandpat at earthlink.net> wrote:
> I struggled for a long time to have an internet connection for Ubuntu
> 8.o4,  we got it going except for Firefox it  would not start..Once it
> is done it seems so simple but it wouldn't be without your help
>  Upgraded to Ubuntu 8.1o, everything just fine except Firefox, cannot
> get  it  started. We unchecked  Firefox off/line but still, Firefox
> won't start.


This is one of the times when just the smallest bit of command line
knowledge will really help. Avoid advice to "click here" and "click
there." instead, try to understand what is actually going on.

You don't tell us how you are connecting to your ISP, or whether you
have a fixed (or static) or a dynamic IP address (assigned by DHCP).
If it is fixed, this will be easy to figure out.  If it is assigned

Find out if you have an "active internet connection".

Open terminal, type command "/sbin/ifconfig".  Here's what I see:

 /sbin/ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:14:22:60:c1:ee
          inet addr:129.237.54.125  Bcast:129.237.55.255  Mask:255.255.252.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:5917878 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1471768 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
          RX bytes:1383964916 (1.3 GB)  TX bytes:201660095 (201.6 MB)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:33126 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:33126 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:50837414 (50.8 MB)  TX bytes:50837414 (50.8 MB)

Your IP address will show with "inet addr" and you need to know it is
a valid thing.

lo is the "loopback" device, it is always there, just leave it. If you
don't have one, get it fixed. It is VITAL for things to work.


Next, in an Ubuntu system, check the content of the file
/etc/network/interfaces. It will list your configured interfaces. In
this workstation, I have:

$ cat interfaces
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

iface eth0 inet static
address 129.237.54.25
netmask 255.255.252.0
gateway 129.237.55.254

auto eth0

As far as I know, you can manually edit those values to fix them. If
any of them are wrong for your setting, then your networking will not
be good.

If you have interfaces listed, but they are not running, you can try
to start them manually:

$ sudo /sbin/ifup eth0

to start or

$ sudo /sbin/ifdown eth0

to turn off.

One common problem is that you might have 2 devices active--such as a
wireless and a wire. In that case, I've sometimes found neither works
because they fight each other.  So turn one off if you see several in
/sbin/ifconfig.

I suspect Firefox is failing because you do not have valid Domain Name
servers set up, or possibly because your default gateway is not set
correctly.  It is possible to have an ethernet connection "up" but
have Firefox fail because when you try to browse "gnome.org" the
system has no way to check.

On all systems, as far as I know, the DNS settings are placed in a
file /etc/resolv.conf.  You should look in there to see if valid
numbers are set.  I see:

$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
nameserver 129.237.28.1

I know that is a valid name server because my system administrator says so.

Ubuntu has a GUI thing to try to study your setup.  It is called
"gnome-nettool" . It may show up in your menu as
System->Admin->NetworkTools. Run it from a terminal, you will feel
less like a nubie.  It does not work to change settings, but it does
display them.  You should be particularly interested in making sure
you have valid "IP Address", "Netmask". It has a "Ping" thing where
you can type in some web address and see if you get an answer.
"gnome.org" answers me there.

I'm a refugee from RedHat, where (IMHO) it was a bit easier to find
the configuration tools because they all started with a common name
structure (system-config-???).  I'm not entirely sure all Ubuntu
installs will have a common GUI network configurator.  In my laptop,
there is the gnome network manager icon that has an editor for
connections, but I can't predict what kind of a config tool you have.

In the old-school, we'd say "you don't know if it is right unless you
fix the file yourself".  Of course, as time goes bye, they try to make
things more automatic and manageable for people who don't know
anything about linux, making it more difficult for us to decipher what
is actually going wrong.

pj