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Question

Getting an internet connection in Linux Ubuntu 10.10

Apr 24, 2011 4:46AM PDT

Hi, I've recently made the switch to Ubuntu 10.10 from windows xp, as my copy of windows was corrupted by viruses. In XP, I never had problems with my internet connection. I have an HP desktop computer, 80 gb hd, 4 gb ram. I run an ethernet cablef from my router receiving broadband dsl. However, no matter what I try, (everything posted on these forums) nothing seems to work to get connected to the internet. An error message pops up in Firefox saying "cannot find the server at (site)."

Thanks for your help!

Discussion is locked

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Answer
DNS problem?
Apr 24, 2011 11:55AM PDT

This could be one of those strange DNS interoperability problems that occasionally happens. Try my howto at http://www.chrislees.info/ubuntu/opendns.shtml and see if it works. I'm assuming that Ubuntu brings up a notification that it has connected to your Ethernet, but no sites in Firefox work?

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Answer
I also decided to give Linux a try
Apr 30, 2011 2:57PM PDT

and for a couple of weeks things were going well, I was begining to get the hang of things, then one day I could not connect to the internet. The icon in the tool bar over on the top right indicated a red exclamation mark all though it said it was enabled.
After many days of tearing hair I decided to reinstall and noticed that when I had booted off the CD my connection was working, so any way I reinstalled and, blow me down the connection failed when I booted off the HDD. Maybe it's because I'm new to Linux but I found there was very little intuitive diagnostics available, lots of wierd strings of letters and symbols but for a newby not much use.
Any way I thought I would go back to basics and start by checking for any peculiarities in the BIOS. In passing I unset the fast boot option in Bios and found nothing else relevant so saved my only change and rebooted.
What do you think happened? Yes believe it or not my ethernet connection worked and is still working.
Don't ask me why but there it is

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How you determined that connection failed?
May 1, 2011 12:25AM PDT

How you determined that connection failed?
What error you get?

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Linux has MORE intuitive diagnostics than windows ;)
May 1, 2011 12:29AM PDT

<span class="guimenu">>Maybe it's because I'm new to Linux but I found there was very little intuitive diagnostics available..\
Hmm I think you do not check here:
<span class="guimenu">System ? <span class="guimenuitem">Administration ? <span class="guimenuitem">Network Tools
Wink

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this forum is with bugs
May 1, 2011 12:33AM PDT

Many Unicode and few ascii symbols create pure mess Sad

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Linux has MORE intuitive diagnostics than windows ;)
May 1, 2011 12:31AM PDT

<div class="postHead"> <span class="subject">Linux has MORE intuitive diagnostics than windows Wink
<span class="subject">>>Maybe it's because I'm new to Linux but I found
there was very little intuitive diagnostics available..
</div>Hmm I think you do not checked here:
System - Administration - Network Tools
Try them and you will be surprised how ancient windows tools are. Wink