"The Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

(?) The Answer Guy (!)


By James T. Dennis, answerguy@ssc.com
LinuxCare, http://www.linuxcare.com/

(?) Getting Access to the Internet

From albuquerque on Tue, 31 Aug 1999

Hope you can help me. I have a DELL I7K laptop running WIN98 and Linux RH6.0.

Linux seems to be running fine, have GNOME as my window stuff, I can access the PCMCIA card and use a SYQUEST SCSI drive.

Now I'd like to use Linux to access the Internet!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have read most or many How TO s etc. and keep getting lost in the forest.

(!) That's a common problem. The answer will be a rather lengthy one. To answer this question I'll have to start with a view from "ten thousand feet" and then swoop down for a closer look at some details.
As with the answers to many questions about Linux quite a bit of my response will be qualified with: "It depends..."
Since Linux, and UNIX are written following a "toolbox" model it provides us with tools to apply to the whole class of problems. We have to know how to use those tools to fashion our own solution.
In the case of connecting to the Internet most of the "It depends" clauses are followed by the phrase "...on your ISP." Other things depend on your hardware, your distribution, and even on your personal preferences.

(?) Problem? What are the steps need to get on the Internet. (RH says use Linuxcfg's special command - which I can't find.) What is need to set up the Modem; What is needed to set up the DNS numbers(like Win98); What is needed to set up E-Mail; Where is the "Dialer"?

(!) I think Red Hat recommends the use of the linuxconf package. I don't know what Linuxcfg would be, or what sort of "special commands" it might offer.
(I suspect that you have simply mangled the name of the package and haven't referred to HOWTOs in the conventional way. These may seem like nitpicks. However attention to details of this sort, linuxconf vs. Linuxcfg and HOWTOs vs. "How TO s" is actually quite important in using most operating systems, particularly in using any UNIX like system).
So, your questions were:
That looks like five questions. It could also be considered as one broad question for which you've provided four specifications to clarify what you mean by "get on the Internet". I'll revisit each of these questions, with answers, below.
However, first I'll comment on some of the overall problems that lead to these sorts of questions. The first thought might be to say: "Linux is too hard to use." Getting on the Internet is one of the most common operations for PCs these days so it SHOULD be easy and straightforward.
Indeed it could be. If we were buying our computers with appropriate modems included and with Linux pre-installed and pre-configured for our modems AND if we were subscribing to ISPs who catered specifically to the particular Linux distribution that our hardware vendor was providing. If we didn't have so many choices --- then connecting to the Internet would be pretty easy.
Let's compare this to the typical experience of Window '98 user buying a new system and accepting whatever options are presented "up front" in that process. They buy a system with a cheesy little winmodem pre-installed. It includes icons to access MSN (the Microsoft Network) and possibly AOL. These are already on the desktop.
Under those circumstances (and the similar ones which predominate the experience of new Mac users) it is pretty easy to "get on the Internet." We'll ignore the trifling argument that being on MSN or AOL might not quite be the same as "being on the Internet." That's a matter of personal bias.
That process is easy. It sometimes isn't reliable. It certainly isn't flexible and may not be economical nor convenient (you have to put up with quite a bit of advertising if you subscribe to either of these "loss leader" ISPs). When things don't work right you are up against an unyielding brick wall. Lost in all that "ease of use" is any control over the underlying mechanics (much like the situation under the hood of most modern vehicles --- somewhere deeply wedged under all those proprietary electronics is your basic internal combustion, gasoline driven piston engine).
Things get very interesting if you want to have choices; to do things your own way. Linux is very much about "doing things your way." This is a facet of it that comes with quite a cost. It requires quite a time commitment to climb the Linux learning curve.
To complicate issues more every distribution starts out with a set of assumptions how things "should" be done. For example RedHat 6.0 includes 'linuxconf' --- and Red Hat Inc is encouraging people to use it.
Personally I don't like Linuxconf (nitpick, linuxconf is the command, Linuxconf is the subsystem which includes the command, some libraries, help files, an API and some other stuff). What I want from a system configuration management tool is much more focused than Linuxconf is written to provide.
The biggest difference between configuring UNIX-like systems and managing the configuration of NT, Win '9x, MacOS, and other proprietary systems, is that UNIX (and Linux) use text files to store almost all configuration data.
The Microsoft operating systems use a "Registry" (which represents a giant single point of failure as well as a key, performance limiting lock point for which many critical subsystems compete). Almost anything "interesting" that you want to do to configure an NT or Win '9x system involves tweaks to the registry. Anyone from that background who complains about how "non-intuitive" UNIX/Linux configuration file names are should take a good look at those \HKLM\... references to which they've become accustomed.
So, what I want out of a configuration management interface is one which primarily consolidates the process of creating and modifying these configuration text files and integrates that with a documentation and context sensitive help system.
A nice thing about having lots of small, individual text configuration file is that you can prepare one canonical or template that is suited for a given site or situation and easily distribute that to as many systems as necessary. It's scaleable with simple distribution and processing (scripting and text processing) tools.
The dark side of this model is that each of these conf files has a unique syntax and set of semantics. It's like having to know dozens of dialects of Hindi and Punjab to work within one administrative domain. That's the problem that I want solved.
Linuxconf tries to do too many other things and doesn't offer me a way to just spit out the conf files.
So, I don't use it.
This means that its quite possible that you could use Linuxconf to do what you want with a minimum of fuss and virtually no understanding of what all the "moving parts" mean or how they relate. However, I can't guide you along that path --- since I've taken the low road (or the "low-level" road as it were).

(?) Any help or assistance you can provide would be ever so greatly appreciated!

Thankyou Al

(!) So, let's revisit those questions:
What do you mean by "on the Internet?" You mention using a modem and using e-mail. So I'll guess that you want to be a simple, dial-in PPP client, to access web and e-mail (presumably through a POP mailbox) from a conventional ISP.
Note that I'm guessing here. There are many other ways to be "on the Internet."
For example you might want to have your own domain, configure one modem to maintain a persistent connection to the Internet, set up your own web and mail servers, configure another modem for dial-in by some associates etc. That would an equally legitimate interpretation of your question.
In general the process of connecting a Linux box consists of the following steps:
Most of these correspond to the other questions you asked. Fans of the OSI networking reference model will note that I've listed these roughly in order from the lowest level (physical) towards the upper (applications) layer. We're "stacking" each step on top of the ones on which it depends. (I bet some of you have wondered by the call it a "TCP/IP stack").
In your case you've said that you want to use a modem. So that will be your communications channel. We'll cover that with your next question.
Once you've dialed into your ISP and established a modem connnection, you'll have to run some protocol over that connection in order to provide any sort of networking through it. These days that will almost certainly be PPP. In the days of yore (about 4 or 5 years ago) you might have been coping with SLIP. That's virtually unheard of these days.
Under Linux PPP is provided by the PPP daemon, usually installed as /usr/sbin/pppd.
Your ISP probably defaults to issuing "dynamic IP" addresses. The PPP protocol has features for negotiating and establishing addressing, masking, and routing for each new connection. So long as you stick with reasonable defaults then you won't have to deal with those issues directly. We'll talk about that, and LAN addressing when we address your third question.
Almost all operations on the Internet are done using host and domain names. So one of the most vital "glue" services provided by the Internet is DNS.
This is usually classified as an "applications layer" service, because the Internet TCP/IP protocols don't conform to the seven layer OSI reference model. I tend to think of it as a "presentation layer" service (having to do with the translation between user/applications representation in the form of names to a lower level machine representation, IP addresses). I'm sure some OSI purist will correct me on this.
In any event there is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem when we think about DNS. We have to provide an egg, in the form of one or more IP addressesothercenter">HTML transformation by Heather Stern of Starshine Technical Services, http://www.starshine.org/

[ Answer Guy Index ] 1 2 3 4
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[ Table Of Contents ] [ Front Page ] [ Previous Section ] [ Next Section ] ./usr/share/doc/lg/issue45/tag/12.html0100644000000000000000000016754706773443203016214 0ustar rootroot The Answer Guy 45: Getting Access to the Internet

"The Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

(?) The Answer Guy (!)


By James T. Dennis, answerguy@ssc.com
LinuxCare, http://www.linuxcare.com/

(?) Getting Access to the Internet

From albuquerque on Tue, 31 Aug 1999

Hope you can help me. I have a DELL I7K laptop running WIN98 and Linux RH6.0.

Linux seems to be running fine, have GNOME as my window stuff, I can access the PCMCIA card and use a SYQUEST SCSI drive.

Now I'd like to use Linux to access the Internet!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have read most or many How TO s etc. and keep getting lost in the forest.

(!) That's a common problem. The answer will be a rather lengthy one. To answer this question I'll have to start with a view from "ten thousand feet" and then swoop down for a closer look at some details.
As with the answers to many questions about Linux quite a bit of my response will be qualified with: "It depends..."
Since Linux, and UNIX are written following a "toolbox" model it provides us with tools to apply to the whole class of problems. We have to know how to use those tools to fashion our own solution.
In the case of connecting to the Internet most of the "It depends" clauses are followed by the phrase "...on your ISP." Other things depend on your hardware, your distribution, and even on your personal preferences.

(?) Problem? What are the steps need to get on the Internet. (RH says use Linuxcfg's special command - which I can't find.) What is need to set up the Modem; What is needed to set up the DNS numbers(like Win98); What is needed to set up E-Mail; Where is the "Dialer"?

(!) I think Red Hat recommends the use of the linuxconf package. I don't know what Linuxcfg would be, or what sort of "special commands" it might offer.
(I suspect that you have simply mangled the name of the package and haven't referred to HOWTOs in the conventional way. These may seem like nitpicks. However attention to details of this sort, linuxconf vs. Linuxcfg and HOWTOs vs. "How TO s" is actually quite important in using most operating systems, particularly in using any UNIX like system).
So, your questions were:
That looks like five questions. It could also be considered as one broad question for which you've provided four specifications to clarify what you mean by "get on the Internet". I'll revisit each of these questions, with answers, below.
However, first I'll comment on some of the overall problems that lead to these sorts of questions. The first thought might be to say: "Linux is too hard to use." Getting on the Internet is one of the most common operations for PCs these days so it SHOULD be easy and straightforward.
Indeed it could be. If we were buying our computers with appropriate modems included and with Linux pre-installed and pre-configured for our modems AND if we were subscribing to ISPs who catered specifically to the particular Linux distribution that our hardware vendor was providing. If we didn't have so many choices --- then connecting to the Internet would be pretty easy.
Let's compare this to the typical experience of Window '98 user buying a new system and accepting whatever options are presented "up front" in that process. They buy a system with a cheesy little winmodem pre-installed. It includes icons to access MSN (the Microsoft Network) and possibly AOL. These are already on the desktop.
Under those circumstances (and the similar ones which predominate the experience of new Mac users) it is pretty easy to "get on the Internet." We'll ignore the trifling argument that being on MSN or AOL might not quite be the same as "being on the Internet." That's a matter of personal bias.
That process is easy. It sometimes isn't reliable. It certainly isn't flexible and may not be economical nor convenient (you have to put up with quite a bit of advertising if you subscribe to either of these "loss leader" ISPs). When things don't work right you are up against an unyielding brick wall. Lost in all that "ease of use" is any control over the underlying mechanics (much like the situation under the hood of most modern vehicles --- somewhere deeply wedged under all those proprietary electronics is your basic internal combustion, gasoline driven piston engine).
Things get very interesting if you want to have choices; to do things your own way. Linux is very much about "doing things your way." This is a facet of it that comes with quite a cost. It requires quite a time commitment to climb the Linux learning curve.
To complicate issues more every distribution starts out with a set of assumptions how things "should" be done. For example RedHat 6.0 includes 'linuxconf' --- and Red Hat Inc is encouraging people to use it.
Personally I don't like Linuxconf (nitpick, linuxconf is the command, Linuxconf is the subsystem which includes the command, some libraries, help files, an API and some other stuff). What I want from a system configuration management tool is much more focused than Linuxconf is written to provide.
The biggest difference between configuring UNIX-like systems and managing the configuration of NT, Win '9x, MacOS, and other proprietary systems, is that UNIX (and Linux) use text files to store almost all configuration data.
The Microsoft operating systems use a "Registry" (which represents a giant single point of failure as well as a key, performance limiting lock point for which many critical subsystems compete). Almost anything "interesting" that you want to do to configure an NT or Win '9x system involves tweaks to the registry. Anyone from that background who complains about how "non-intuitive" UNIX/Linux configuration file names are should take a good look at those \HKLM\... references to which they've become accustomed.
So, what I want out of a configuration management interface is one which primarily consolidates the process of creating and modifying these configuration text files and integrates that with a documentation and context sensitive help system.
A nice thing about having lots of small, individual text configuration file is that you can prepare one canonical or template that is suited for a given site or situation and easily distribute that to as many systems as necessary. It's scaleable with simple distribution and processing (scripting and text processing) tools.
The dark side of this model is that each of these conf files has a unique syntax and set of semantics. It's like having to know dozens of dialects of Hindi and Punjab to work within one administrative domain. That's the problem that I want solved.
Linuxconf tries to do too many other things and doesn't offer me a way to just spit out the conf files.
So, I don't use it.
This means that its quite possible that you could use Linuxconf to do what you want with a minimum of fuss and virtually no understanding of what all the "moving parts" mean or how they relate. However, I can't guide you along that path --- since I've taken the low road (or the "low-level" road as it were).

(?) Any help or assistance you can provide would be ever so greatly appreciated!

Thankyou Al

(!) So, let's revisit those questions:
What do you mean by "on the Internet?" You mention using a modem and using e-mail. So I'll guess that you want to be a simple, dial-in PPP client, to access web and e-mail (presumably through a POP mailbox) from a conventional ISP.
Note that I'm guessing here. There are many other ways to be "on the Internet."
For example you might want to have your own domain, configure one modem to maintain a persistent connection to the Internet, set up your own web and mail servers, configure another modem for dial-in by some associates etc. That would an equally legitimate interpretation of your question.
In general the process of connecting a Linux box consists of the following steps:
Most of these correspond to the other questions you asked. Fans of the OSI networking reference model will note that I've listed these roughly in order from the lowest level (physical) towards the upper (applications) layer. We're "stacking" each step on top of the ones on which it depends. (I bet some of you have wondered by the call it a "TCP/IP stack").
In your case you've said that you want to use a modem. So that will be your communications channel. We'll cover that with your next question.
Once you've dialed into your ISP and established a modem connnection, you'll have to run some protocol over that connection in order to provide any sort of networking through it. These days that will almost certainly be PPP. In the days of yore (about 4 or 5 years ago) you might have been coping with SLIP. That's virtually unheard of these days.
Under Linux PPP is provided by the PPP daemon, usually installed as /usr/sbin/pppd.
Your ISP probably defaults to issuing "dynamic IP" addresses. The PPP protocol has features for negotiating and establishing addressing, masking, and routing for each new connection. So long as you stick with reasonable defaults then you won't have to deal with those issues directly. We'll talk about that, and LAN addressing when we address your third question.
Almost all operations on the Internet are done using host and domain names. So one of the most vital "glue" services provided by the Internet is DNS.
This is usually classified as an "applications layer" service, because the Internet TCP/IP protocols don't conform to the seven layer OSI reference model. I tend to think of it as a "presentation layer" service (having to do with the translation between user/applications representation in the form of names to a lower level machine representation, IP addresses). I'm sure some OSI purist will correct me on this.
In any event there is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem when we think about DNS. We have to provide an egg, in the form of one or more IP addressesothercenter">HTML transformation by Heather Stern of Starshine Technical Services, http://www.starshine.org/

[ Answer Guy Index ] 1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13

[ Table Of Contents ] [ Front Page ] [ Previous Section ] [ Next Section ] ./usr/share/doc/lg/issue45/tag/12.html0100644000000000000000000016754706773443203016214 0ustar rootroot The Answer Guy 45: Getting Access to the Internet

"The Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

(?) The Answer Guy (!)


By James T. Dennis, answerguy@ssc.com
LinuxCare, http://www.linuxcare.com/

(?) Getting Access to the Internet

From albuquerque on Tue, 31 Aug 1999

Hope you can help me. I have a DELL I7K laptop running WIN98 and Linux RH6.0.

Linux seems to be running fine, have GNOME as my window stuff, I can access the PCMCIA card and use a SYQUEST SCSI drive.

Now I'd like to use Linux to access the Internet!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have read most or many How TO s etc. and keep getting lost in the forest.

(!) That's a common problem. The answer will be a rather lengthy one. To answer this question I'll have to start with a view from "ten thousand feet" and then swoop down for a closer look at some details.
As with the answers to many questions about Linux quite a bit of my response will be qualified with: "It depends..."
Since Linux, and UNIX are written following a "toolbox" model it provides us with tools to apply to the whole class of problems. We have to know how to use those tools to fashion our own solution.
In the case of connecting to the Internet most of the "It depends" clauses are followed by the phrase "...on your ISP." Other things depend on your hardware, your distribution, and even on your personal preferences.

(?) Problem? What are the steps need to get on the Internet. (RH says use Linuxcfg's special command - which I can't find.) What is need to set up the Modem; What is needed to set up the DNS numbers(like Win98); What is needed to set up E-Mail; Where is the "Dialer"?

(!) I think Red Hat recommends the use of the linuxconf package. I don't know what Linuxcfg would be, or what sort of "special commands" it might offer.
(I suspect that you have simply mangled the name of the package and haven't referred to HOWTOs in the conventional way. These may seem like nitpicks. However attention to details of this sort, linuxconf vs. Linuxcfg and HOWTOs vs. "How TO s" is actually quite important in using most operating systems, particularly in using any UNIX like system).
So, your questions were:
  • What are the steps needed to "get on the Internet" with Linux?
  • What is needed to set up a modem under Linux?
  • What is needed to set up "DNS numbers" (by which I presume you mean: set your IP address, network/subnet mask, broadcast address, and specify the addresses of your "nearest" name servers)?
  • What is needed to needed to set up e-mail?
  • Where is the "Dialer?"
That looks like five questions. It could also be considered as one broad question for which you've provided four specifications to clarify what you mean by "get on the Internet". I'll revisit each of these questions, with answers, below.
However, first I'll comment on some of the overall problems that lead to these sorts of questions. The first thought might be to say: "Linux is too hard to use." Getting on the Internet is one of the most common operations for PCs these days so it SHOULD be easy and straightforward.
Indeed it could be. If we were buying our computers with appropriate modems included and with Linux pre-installed and pre-configured for our modems AND if we were subscribing to ISPs who catered specifically to the particular Linux distribution that our hardware vendor was providing. If we didn't have so many choices --- then connecting to the Internet would be pretty easy.
Let's compare this to the typical experience of Window '98 user buying a new system and accepting whatever options are presented "up front" in that process. They buy a system with a cheesy little winmodem pre-installed. It includes icons to access MSN (the Microsoft Network) and possibly AOL. These are already on the desktop.
Under those circumstances (and the similar ones which predominate the experience of new Mac users) it is pretty easy to "get on the Internet." We'll ignore the trifling argument that being on MSN or AOL might not quite be the same as "being on the Internet." That's a matter of personal bias.
That process is easy. It sometimes isn't reliable. It certainly isn't flexible and may not be economical nor convenient (you have to put up with quite a bit of advertising if you subscribe to either of these "loss leader" ISPs). When things don't work right you are up against an unyielding brick wall. Lost in all that "ease of use" is any control over the underlying mechanics (much like the situation under the hood of most modern vehicles --- somewhere deeply wedged under all those proprietary electronics is your basic internal combustion, gasoline driven piston engine).
Things get very interesting if you want to have choices; to do things your own way. Linux is very much about "doing things your way." This is a facet of it that comes with quite a cost. It requires quite a time commitment to climb the Linux learning curve.
To complicate issues more every distribution starts out with a set of assumptions how things "should" be done. For example RedHat 6.0 includes 'linuxconf' --- and Red Hat Inc is encouraging people to use it.
Personally I don't like Linuxconf (nitpick, linuxconf is the command, Linuxconf is the subsystem which includes the command, some libraries, help files, an API and some other stuff). What I want from a system configuration management tool is much more focused than Linuxconf is written to provide.
The biggest difference between configuring UNIX-like systems and managing the configuration of NT, Win '9x, MacOS, and other proprietary systems, is that UNIX (and Linux) use text files to store almost all configuration data.
The Microsoft operating systems use a "Registry" (which represents a giant single point of failure as well as a key, performance limiting lock point for which many critical subsystems compete). Almost anything "interesting" that you want to do to configure an NT or Win '9x system involves tweaks to the registry. Anyone from that background who complains about how "non-intuitive" UNIX/Linux configuration file names are should take a good look at those \HKLM\... references to which they've become accustomed.
So, what I want out of a configuration management interface is one which primarily consolidates the process of creating and modifying these configuration text files and integrates that with a documentation and context sensitive help system.
A nice thing about having lots of small, individual text configuration file is that you can prepare one canonical or template that is suited for a given site or situation and easily distribute that to as many systems as necessary. It's scaleable with simple distribution and processing (scripting and text processing) tools.
The dark side of this model is that each of these conf files has a unique syntax and set of semantics. It's like having to know dozens of dialects of Hindi and Punjab to work within one administrative domain. That's the problem that I want solved.
Linuxconf tries to do too many other things and doesn't offer me a way to just spit out the conf files.
So, I don't use it.
This means that its quite possible that you could use Linuxconf to do what you want with a minimum of fuss and virtually no understanding of what all the "moving parts" mean or how they relate. However, I can't guide you along that path --- since I've taken the low road (or the "low-level" road as it were).

(?) Any help or assistance you can provide would be ever so greatly appreciated!

Thankyou Al

(!) So, let's revisit those questions:
  • What are the steps needed to "get on the Internet" with Linux?
What do you mean by "on the Internet?" You mention using a modem and using e-mail. So I'll guess that you want to be a simple, dial-in PPP client, to access web and e-mail (presumably through a POP mailbox) from a conventional ISP.
Note that I'm guessing here. There are many other ways to be "on the Internet."
For example you might want to have your own domain, configure one modem to maintain a persistent connection to the Internet, set up your own web and mail servers, configure another modem for dial-in by some associates etc. That would an equally legitimate interpretation of your question.
In general the process of connecting a Linux box consists of the following steps:
  • Establish a physical link (communications channel)
  • Configure a TCP/IP interface (handle IP addressing, subnet masking, etc)
  • Configure routing (usually: set a default route)
  • Configure name services resolution (/etc/resolv.conf)
  • Configure and access specific applications services
Most of these correspond to the other questions you asked. Fans of the OSI networking reference model will note that I've listed these roughly in order from the lowest level (physical) towards the upper (applications) layer. We're "stacking" each step on top of the ones on which it depends. (I bet some of you have wondered by the call it a "TCP/IP stack").
In your case you've said that you want to use a modem. So that will be your communications channel. We'll cover that with your next question.
Once you've dialed into your ISP and established a modem connnection, you'll have to run some protocol over that connection in order to provide any sort of networking through it. These days that will almost certainly be PPP. In the days of yore (about 4 or 5 years ago) you might have been coping with SLIP. That's virtually unheard of these days.
Under Linux PPP is provided by the PPP daemon, usually installed as /usr/sbin/pppd.
Your ISP probably defaults to issuing "dynamic IP" addresses. The PPP protocol has features for negotiating and establishing addressing, masking, and routing for each new connection. So long as you stick with reasonable defaults then you won't have to deal with those issues directly. We'll talk about that, and LAN addressing when we address your third question.
Almost all operations on the Internet are done using host and domain names. So one of the most vital "glue" services provided by the Internet is DNS.
This is usually classified as an "applications layer" service, because the Internet TCP/IP protocols don't conform to the seven layer OSI reference model. I tend to think of it as a "presentation layer" service (having to do with the translation between user/applications representation in the form of names to a lower level machine representation, IP addresses). I'm sure some OSI purist will correct me on this.
In any event there is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem when we think about DNS. We have to provide an egg, in the form of one or more IP addressesothercenter">HTML transformation by Heather Stern of Starshine Technical Services, http://www.starshine.org/

[ Answer Guy Index ] 1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13

[ Table Of Contents ] [ Front Page ] [ Previous Section ] [ Next Section ] ./usr/share/doc/lg/issue45/tag/12.html0100644000000000000000000016754706773443203016214 0ustar rootroot The Answer Guy 45: Getting Access to the Internet

"The Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

(?) The Answer Guy (!)


By James T. Dennis, answerguy@ssc.com
LinuxCare, http://www.linuxcare.com/

(?) Getting Access to the Internet

From albuquerque on Tue, 31 Aug 1999

Hope you can help me. I have a DELL I7K laptop running WIN98 and Linux RH6.0.

Linux seems to be running fine, have GNOME as my window stuff, I can access the PCMCIA card and use a SYQUEST SCSI drive.

Now I'd like to use Linux to access the Internet!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have read most or many How TO s etc. and keep getting lost in the forest.

(!) That's a common problem. The answer will be a rather lengthy one. To answer this question I'll have to start with a view from "ten thousand feet" and then swoop down for a closer look at some details.
As with the answers to many questions about Linux quite a bit of my response will be qualified with: "It depends..."
Since Linux, and UNIX are written following a "toolbox" model it provides us with tools to apply to the whole class of problems. We have to know how to use those tools to fashion our own solution.
In the case of connecting to the Internet most of the "It depends" clauses are followed by the phrase "...on your ISP." Other things depend on your hardware, your distribution, and even on your personal preferences.

(?) Problem? What are the steps need to get on the Internet. (RH says use Linuxcfg's special command - which I can't find.) What is need to set up the Modem; What is needed to set up the DNS numbers(like Win98); What is needed to set up E-Mail; Where is the "Dialer"?

(!) I think Red Hat recommends the use of the linuxconf package. I don't know what Linuxcfg would be, or what sort of "special commands" it might offer.
(I suspect that you have simply mangled the name of the package and haven't referred to HOWTOs in the conventional way. These may seem like nitpicks. However attention to details of this sort, linuxconf vs. Linuxcfg and HOWTOs vs. "How TO s" is actually quite important in using most operating systems, particularly in using any UNIX like system).
So, your questions were:
  • What are the steps needed to "get on the Internet" with Linux?
  • What is needed to set up a modem under Linux?
  • What is needed to set up "DNS numbers" (by which I presume you mean: set your IP address, network/subnet mask, broadcast address, and specify the addresses of your "nearest" name servers)?
  • What is needed to needed to set up e-mail?
  • Where is the "Dialer?"
That looks like five questions. It could also be considered as one broad question for which you've provided four specifications to clarify what you mean by "get on the Internet". I'll revisit each of these questions, with answers, below.
However, first I'll comment on some of the overall problems that lead to these sorts of questions. The first thought might be to say: "Linux is too hard to use." Getting on the Internet is one of the most common operations for PCs these days so it SHOULD be easy and straightforward.
Indeed it could be. If we were buying our computers with appropriate modems included and with Linux pre-installed and pre-configured for our modems AND if we were subscribing to ISPs who catered specifically to the particular Linux distribution that our hardware vendor was providing. If we didn't have so many choices --- then connecting to the Internet would be pretty easy.
Let's compare this to the typical experience of Window '98 user buying a new system and accepting whatever options are presented "up front" in that process. They buy a system with a cheesy little winmodem pre-installed. It includes icons to access MSN (the Microsoft Network) and possibly AOL. These are already on the desktop.
Under those circumstances (and the similar ones which predominate the experience of new Mac users) it is pretty easy to "get on the Internet." We'll ignore the trifling argument that being on MSN or AOL might not quite be the same as "being on the Internet." That's a matter of personal bias.
That process is easy. It sometimes isn't reliable. It certainly isn't flexible and may not be economical nor convenient (you have to put up with quite a bit of advertising if you subscribe to either of these "loss leader" ISPs). When things don't work right you are up against an unyielding brick wall. Lost in all that "ease of use" is any control over the underlying mechanics (much like the situation under the hood of most modern vehicles --- somewhere deeply wedged under all those proprietary electronics is your basic internal combustion, gasoline driven piston engine).
Things get very interesting if you want to have choices; to do things your own way. Linux is very much about "doing things your way." This is a facet of it that comes with quite a cost. It requires quite a time commitment to climb the Linux learning curve.
To complicate issues more every distribution starts out with a set of assumptions how things "should" be done. For example RedHat 6.0 includes 'linuxconf' --- and Red Hat Inc is encouraging people to use it.
Personally I don't like Linuxconf (nitpick, linuxconf is the command, Linuxconf is the subsystem which includes the command, some libraries, help files, an API and some other stuff). What I want from a system configuration management tool is much more focused than Linuxconf is written to provide.
The biggest difference between configuring UNIX-like systems and managing the configuration of NT, Win '9x, MacOS, and other proprietary systems, is that UNIX (and Linux) use text files to store almost all configuration data.
The Microsoft operating systems use a "Registry" (which represents a giant single point of failure as well as a key, performance limiting lock point for which many critical subsystems compete). Almost anything "interesting" that you want to do to configure an NT or Win '9x system involves tweaks to the registry. Anyone from that background who complains about how "non-intuitive" UNIX/Linux configuration file names are should take a good look at those \HKLM\... references to which they've become accustomed.
So, what I want out of a configuration management interface is one which primarily consolidates the process of creating and modifying these configuration text files and integrates that with a documentation and context sensitive help system.
A nice thing about having lots of small, individual text configuration file is that you can prepare one canonical or template that is suited for a given site or situation and easily distribute that to as many systems as necessary. It's scaleable with simple distribution and processing (scripting and text processing) tools.
The dark side of this model is that each of these conf files has a unique syntax and set of semantics. It's like having to know dozens of dialects of Hindi and Punjab to work within one administrative domain. That's the problem that I want solved.
Linuxconf tries to do too many other things and doesn't offer me a way to just spit out the conf files.
So, I don't use it.
This means that its quite possible that you could use Linuxconf to do what you want with a minimum of fuss and virtually no understanding of what all the "moving parts" mean or how they relate. However, I can't guide you along that path --- since I've taken the low road (or the "low-level" road as it were).

(?) Any help or assistance you can provide would be ever so greatly appreciated!

Thankyou Al

(!) So, let's revisit those questions:
  • What are the steps needed to "get on the Internet" with Linux?
What do you mean by "on the Internet?" You mention using a modem and using e-mail. So I'll guess that you want to be a simple, dial-in PPP client, to access web and e-mail (presumably through a POP mailbox) from a conventional ISP.
Note that I'm guessing here. There are many other ways to be "on the Internet."
For example you might want to have your own domain, configure one modem to maintain a persistent connection to the Internet, set up your own web and mail servers, configure another modem for dial-in by some associates etc. That would an equally legitimate interpretation of your question.
In general the process of connecting a Linux box consists of the following steps:
  • Establish a physical link (communications channel)
  • Configure a TCP/IP interface (handle IP addressing, subnet masking, etc)
  • Configure routing (usually: set a default route)
  • Configure name services resolution (/etc/resolv.conf)
  • Configure and access specific applications services
Most of these correspond to the other questions you asked. Fans of the OSI networking reference model will note that I've listed these roughly in order from the lowest level (physical) towards the upper (applications) layer. We're "stacking" each step on top of the ones on which it depends. (I bet some of you have wondered by the call it a "TCP/IP stack").
In your case you've said that you want to use a modem. So that will be your communications channel. We'll cover that with your next question.
Once you've dialed into your ISP and established a modem connnection, you'll have to run some protocol over that connection in order to provide any sort of networking through it. These days that will almost certainly be PPP. In the days