ubuntu help

[Matt Graham]

After a long battle with technology, Dazed_75 wrote:
> On 10/1/07, betty <nicepenguin at webcanine.com> wrote:
> > I just put ubuntu on my office computer, got it to connect o.k. to the
> > internet, BUT it doesn't recognize my outgoing or incoming email servers
> > and for some reason, the firefox won't connect. although i can see on
> > the ext. modem (and hear on the phone line) that it IS connected.
> I would add that it does seem a bit odd to be using dial-up from an office
> computer (though not unheard of).

Yeah, most offices have something better than dialup if they've got more than 
one machine in them.  You sort of need bandwidth if you have people mailing 
each other 10M .ppt files all day (which happens a lot.)

> But based on other experiences, I can say that Linux in general does 
> not always handle having two separate paths to the internet very well. 

That's what the "assign default route to this interface" checkbox in kppp is 
for.  Check it, and the PPP interface becomes the default gateway.  This is 
what most PPP users want, though there are specialized situations when you 
don't want this.

> Case in point being a system having both a wired and a wireless connection
> even via the same router.  You might want to try ifconfig to see if the
> system believes it has two working interfaces to the net.

Actually, "route -n" would be a better thing to look at if the routes are 
mangled.  You'd see one line like so:

Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
0.0.0.0         192.168.1.1     0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 eth0

...packets that are not destined for the local (192.168.1.0, 127.0.0.0) nets 
are sent to the gateway.  Betty would probably see something similar, but 
it'd be ppp0 instead of eth0, and the gateway address would probably be a 
routable IP corresponding to the device on the other end of the PPP link.

-- 
   I find that having a pint or two is a good problem-solving technique.
   Especially if it's vodka rather than beer.
      --Peter Corlett in ASR
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see