ubuntu help

[Matt Graham]

After a long battle with technology, betty 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, Firefox won't connect. Although i can see on
> the ext. modem (and hear on the phone line) that it IS connected.
> Any ideas?

DNS.  "cat /etc/resolv.conf" after you connect should return something like 
the following:

search example.org
nameserver 1.2.3.4
nameserver 5.6.7.8

...if it returns nothing at all, then name resolution won't work, which means 
your machine has no way of translating "somewhere.example.org" 
to "192.168.12.24".  It's been so long since I've used a phone line+modem as 
a Net connection that I've forgotten what the option you need to set is 
called.  Something like "usepeerdns" for old-school command line, and 
Configure Account->DNS->"automatic" in kppp.  I don't like using GNOME, so I 
couldn't tell you the exact name of the setting you need to change in 
whatever frontend to PPP they use in GNOME.  HTH anyway,

-- 
Sometimes I lie awake at night, and I ask, "Where have I gone wrong?"
Then a voice says to me, "This is going to take more than one night."
  --Charles M. Schulz (1922 - 2000), Charlie Brown in "Peanuts"
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see