Can ping by hostname, can't browse -- huh??

[Michelle Lowman]

I'm new to the list, but I hope someone has a solution here. My internet
connection WAS fine until I decided to be clever and mess with it.

I was connected through a 4-port Linksys router to a cable modem, and both
my Red Hat 8.0 box and my husband's Win2K laptop could connect with no
problem. The router also acted as a DHCP server. I decided yesterday to set
up my Red Hat machine as a print server, so I disabled DHCP on the router
and assigned a static IP to the RH box (the same IP the router always
assigned: 192.168.1.100).

When I did that, I was no longer able to browse or get email, so I tried to
change it back. I enabled DHCP on the router, reset everything, including
making sure that eth0 gets its IP from the DHCP server.

So now the router won't route. I can ping hosts on the internet by IP and
by hostname, but I can only browse by IP (which is not exactly practical).
I tried to connect directly to the cable modem, taking the router out of
the loop, and I can still ping by IP or hostname, but I still can't browse.
(I also tried a reset of the router, and all that seemed to do was revert
it back to the factory password.)

The odd thing is that only my Red Hat box has this problem. The Win2k
machine also has problems with the router (can ping, can't browse), but
when it's connected directly to the cable modem, it can browse just fine.

The DNS settings in /etc/resolv.conf on the Red Hat machine are exactly the
same as the DNS settings on the Win2k machine, so that isn't it.

Another strange thing about the Red Hat box is that when I start it up,
Gnome tells me that it can't resolve the hostname, livia. However, the
/etc/hosts file DOES contain
127.0.0.1 livia localhost.localdomain localhost
and has contained that line throughout this entire mess.

Any ideas? Or should I just go give myself a swirly . . .

-Michelle

[Ben Russo]

Post by Michelle Lowman
I'm new to the list, but I hope someone has a solution here. My
internet connection WAS fine until I decided to be clever and mess
with it.
I was connected through a 4-port Linksys router to a cable modem, and
both my Red Hat 8.0 box and my husband's Win2K laptop could connect
with no problem. The router also acted as a DHCP server. I decided
yesterday to set up my Red Hat machine as a print server, so I
disabled DHCP on the router and assigned a static IP to the RH box
(the same IP the router always assigned: 192.168.1.100).
When I did that, I was no longer able to browse or get email, so I
tried to change it back. I enabled DHCP on the router, reset
everything, including making sure that eth0 gets its IP from the DHCP
server.
So now the router won't route. I can ping hosts on the internet by IP
and by hostname, but I can only browse by IP (which is not exactly
practical). I tried to connect directly to the cable modem, taking the
router out of the loop, and I can still ping by IP or hostname, but I
still can't browse. (I also tried a reset of the router, and all that
seemed to do was revert it back to the factory password.)
The odd thing is that only my Red Hat box has this problem. The Win2k
machine also has problems with the router (can ping, can't browse),
but when it's connected directly to the cable modem, it can browse
just fine.
The DNS settings in /etc/resolv.conf on the Red Hat machine are
exactly the same as the DNS settings on the Win2k machine, so that
isn't it.
Another strange thing about the Red Hat box is that when I start it
up, Gnome tells me that it can't resolve the hostname, livia. However,
the /etc/hosts file DOES contain
127.0.0.1 livia localhost.localdomain localhost
and has contained that line throughout this entire mess.

A swirly is always amusing (as long as I am not the one receiving it.
In your /etc/resolv.conf you need some entries like the following:

search my.home-domain.org my-company.com
server 192.168.1.1
server 192.168.1.2

Where the IP addresses are those belonging to your DNS servers,
and the search domains are those that you wish to be able to lookup
short hostnames in without typing a fully qualified domain name.

-Ben.

[Michelle Lowman]

Post by Ben Russo

Post by Michelle Lowman
The DNS settings in /etc/resolv.conf on the Red Hat machine are exactly
the same as the DNS settings on the Win2k machine, so that isn't it.
Another strange thing about the Red Hat box is that when I start it up,
Gnome tells me that it can't resolve the hostname, livia. However, the
/etc/hosts file DOES contain
127.0.0.1 livia localhost.localdomain localhost
and has contained that line throughout this entire mess.

A swirly is always amusing (as long as I am not the one receiving it.
search my.home-domain.org my-company.com
server 192.168.1.1
server 192.168.1.2
Where the IP addresses are those belonging to your DNS servers,
and the search domains are those that you wish to be able to lookup short
hostnames in without typing a fully qualified domain name.
-Ben.

Thanks for the quick response. My resolv.conf looks something like this:

search ph.cox.net
server 68.2.16.25
server 68.2.16.30
server 68.6.16.30

This is the same as what I have in my Windows network configuration (the
one that works), so I'm pretty sure that's not the problem.
(Fluuuussshhhhhh . . . .)

-Michelle

[Ben Russo]

Post by Michelle Lowman
search ph.cox.net
server 68.2.16.25
server 68.2.16.30
server 68.6.16.30
This is the same as what I have in my Windows network configuration
(the one that works), so I'm pretty sure that's not the problem.
(Fluuuussshhhhhh . . . .)
-Michelle

Sorry, I have to admit that I didn't read your post all the way through.
Now, having completely read your e-mail I can say that I don't have a
simple answer, but I do have a lot of helpfull hints for troubleshooting.
It sounds like you have multiple problems, so try fixing one at a time.
First use the web interface to log into your Linksys router and make
sure to reconfigure everything the way it should be.

It is not a good Idea to assign a static IP address to a machine that is
part of a pool of IP addresses that is in use by a DHCP server.
The web interface for your Linksys Router should allow you to either
define a subnet or a range of IP addresses which it will divvy out to
DHCP clients,
Make sure that if you assign an IP address to the RedHat box that it is
NOT an IP address in the DHCP lease range.

Make sure that when you configure your RedHat box that you assign a
defualt gateway, in /etc/sysconfig/network
and that you assign the correct subnet mask in
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
(you can cheat and use "netconfig" or "redhat-config-network" if you
want to).

Use "netstat -ni" and "netstat -nr" to verify that your settings are
what you think they should be.
After changing your config files you may need to run "service network
reload"

If you have your RedHat box configured the way you think it should be,
try to ping the default gateway (should be the Linksys Router?)
Try pinging the DNS servers that you have listed in your
/etc/resolv.conf by IP address.

If you can ping a hostname, like "ping www.swirly.com"
Try doing "dig www.swirly.com"
Try doing "dig www.swirly.com | grep SERVER"

Also try "wget http://www.swirly.com" and see if it was able to save
"index.html"
If not, try "wget -d http://www.swirly.com"

[Eric Chevalier]

Michelle:

You might also want to try changing the keyword "server" to
"nameserver". The man page for resolv.conf specifies "nameserver" as the
keyword that defines the IP addresses of the name servers that your
system should query. I don't see anything that suggests "server" is an
acceptable abbreviation (but that might be an undocumented feature of
the resolver library).

Eric Chevalier

Post by Michelle Lowman
search ph.cox.net
server 68.2.16.25
server 68.2.16.30
server 68.6.16.30
This is the same as what I have in my Windows network configuration
(the one that works), so I'm pretty sure that's not the problem.
(Fluuuussshhhhhh . . . .)
-Michelle

--
Eric Chevalier E-mail: ***@tulsagrammer.com
Web: www.tulsagrammer.com
Is that call really worth your child's life? HANG UP AND DRIVE!

[Eric Chevalier]

Michelle:

When you reconfigured your RH box to use static a static IP address, did
you ALSO configure at least one name server address in the network
settings, as well?

It sounds like your LinkSys router probably had name server addresses
included as part of its configuration. When your RH box was configured
to get IP settings through DHCP, it would get the name server addresses
as part of the information coming back from the LinkSys DCHP server.
When you disabled DHCP on the box, it was no longer getting those name
server addresses. So, if you didn't specify name server addresses
yourself, the only way you're going to be able to contact the outside
world is via IP addresses.

(I'll bet the LinkSys box was getting its network settings from a DHCP
server at your cable company, and those DHCP settings included addresses
of DNS servers that were then being passed along to your RH box by the
DHCP server in the LinkSys box.)

I think this could be an easy problem to fix!

Eric Chevalier

Post by Michelle Lowman
I'm new to the list, but I hope someone has a solution here. My
internet connection WAS fine until I decided to be clever and mess
with it.
I was connected through a 4-port Linksys router to a cable modem, and
both my Red Hat 8.0 box and my husband's Win2K laptop could connect
with no problem. The router also acted as a DHCP server. I decided
yesterday to set up my Red Hat machine as a print server, so I
disabled DHCP on the router and assigned a static IP to the RH box
(the same IP the router always assigned: 192.168.1.100).
When I did that, I was no longer able to browse or get email, so I
tried to change it back. I enabled DHCP on the router, reset
everything, including making sure that eth0 gets its IP from the DHCP
server.
So now the router won't route. I can ping hosts on the internet by IP
and by hostname, but I can only browse by IP (which is not exactly
practical). I tried to connect directly to the cable modem, taking the
router out of the loop, and I can still ping by IP or hostname, but I
still can't browse. (I also tried a reset of the router, and all that
seemed to do was revert it back to the factory password.)
The odd thing is that only my Red Hat box has this problem. The Win2k
machine also has problems with the router (can ping, can't browse),
but when it's connected directly to the cable modem, it can browse
just fine.
The DNS settings in /etc/resolv.conf on the Red Hat machine are
exactly the same as the DNS settings on the Win2k machine, so that
isn't it.
Another strange thing about the Red Hat box is that when I start it
up, Gnome tells me that it can't resolve the hostname, livia. However,
the /etc/hosts file DOES contain
127.0.0.1 livia localhost.localdomain localhost
and has contained that line throughout this entire mess.
Any ideas? Or should I just go give myself a swirly . . .
-Michelle

[Eric Chevalier]

Michelle:

[Apologies for sending this message in HTML format!]

When you reconfigured your RH box to use static a static IP address, did
you ALSO configure at least one name server address in the network
settings, as well?

It sounds like your LinkSys router probably had name server addresses
included as part of its configuration. When your RH box was configured
to get IP settings through DHCP, it would get the name server addresses
as part of the information coming back from the LinkSys DCHP server.
When you disabled DHCP on the box, it was no longer getting those name
server addresses. So, if you didn't specify name server addresses
yourself, the only way you're going to be able to contact the outside
world is via IP addresses.

(I'll bet the LinkSys box was getting its network settings from a DHCP
server at your cable company, and those DHCP settings included addresses
of DNS servers that were then being passed along to your RH box by the
DHCP server in the LinkSys box.)

I think this could be an easy problem to fix!

Eric Chevalier

Post by Michelle Lowman
I'm new to the list, but I hope someone has a solution here. My
internet connection WAS fine until I decided to be clever and mess
with it.
I was connected through a 4-port Linksys router to a cable modem, and
both my Red Hat 8.0 box and my husband's Win2K laptop could connect
with no problem. The router also acted as a DHCP server. I decided
yesterday to set up my Red Hat machine as a print server, so I
disabled DHCP on the router and assigned a static IP to the RH box
(the same IP the router always assigned: 192.168.1.100).
When I did that, I was no longer able to browse or get email, so I
tried to change it back. I enabled DHCP on the router, reset
everything, including making sure that eth0 gets its IP from the DHCP
server.
So now the router won't route. I can ping hosts on the internet by IP
and by hostname, but I can only browse by IP (which is not exactly
practical). I tried to connect directly to the cable modem, taking the
router out of the loop, and I can still ping by IP or hostname, but I
still can't browse. (I also tried a reset of the router, and all that
seemed to do was revert it back to the factory password.)
The odd thing is that only my Red Hat box has this problem. The Win2k
machine also has problems with the router (can ping, can't browse),
but when it's connected directly to the cable modem, it can browse
just fine.
The DNS settings in /etc/resolv.conf on the Red Hat machine are
exactly the same as the DNS settings on the Win2k machine, so that
isn't it.
Another strange thing about the Red Hat box is that when I start it
up, Gnome tells me that it can't resolve the hostname, livia. However,
the /etc/hosts file DOES contain
127.0.0.1 livia localhost.localdomain localhost
and has contained that line throughout this entire mess.
Any ideas? Or should I just go give myself a swirly . . .
-Michelle

--
Eric Chevalier E-mail: ***@tulsagrammer.com
Web: www.tulsagrammer.com
Is that call really worth your child's life? HANG UP AND DRIVE!

[Robert]

U know.. personally, I am not familiar with REdHat scripts, but I would
re-run the network config tools....

I have heard the app setup mentioned a few times.... but I can;t
remember which GUI tools did it...

Find the network config, re-run it - preferrably the complete config...
not just the one card config... let it reconfig the resolver order
(hosts, NIS, DNS) and the card config (dhcp, nameserver dhcp) etc.

Is what I would do...

Rob Day

Post by Eric Chevalier

Post by Michelle Lowman
I'm new to the list, but I hope someone has a solution here. My
internet connection WAS fine until I decided to be clever and mess
with it.
I was connected through a 4-port Linksys router to a cable modem, and
both my Red Hat 8.0 box and my husband's Win2K laptop could connect
with no problem. The router also acted as a DHCP server. I decided
yesterday to set up my Red Hat machine as a print server, so I
disabled DHCP on the router and assigned a static IP to the RH box
(the same IP the router always assigned: 192.168.1.100).
When I did that, I was no longer able to browse or get email, so I
tried to change it back. I enabled DHCP on the router, reset
everything, including making sure that eth0 gets its IP from the DHCP
server.
So now the router won't route. I can ping hosts on the internet by IP
and by hostname, but I can only browse by IP (which is not exactly
practical). I tried to connect directly to the cable modem, taking the
router out of the loop, and I can still ping by IP or hostname, but I
still can't browse. (I also tried a reset of the router, and all that
seemed to do was revert it back to the factory password.)
The odd thing is that only my Red Hat box has this problem. The Win2k
machine also has problems with the router (can ping, can't browse),
but when it's connected directly to the cable modem, it can browse
just fine.
The DNS settings in /etc/resolv.conf on the Red Hat machine are
exactly the same as the DNS settings on the Win2k machine, so that
isn't it.
Another strange thing about the Red Hat box is that when I start it
up, Gnome tells me that it can't resolve the hostname, livia. However,
the /etc/hosts file DOES contain
127.0.0.1 livia localhost.localdomain localhost
and has contained that line throughout this entire mess.
Any ideas? Or should I just go give myself a swirly . . .
-Michelle

--
Web: www.tulsagrammer.com
Is that call really worth your child's life? HANG UP AND DRIVE!

[Michelle Lowman]

Post by Eric Chevalier
[Apologies for sending this message in HTML format!]
When you reconfigured your RH box to use static a static IP address, did
you ALSO configure at least one name server address in the network
settings, as well?
It sounds like your LinkSys router probably had name server addresses
included as part of its configuration. When your RH box was configured to
get IP settings through DHCP, it would get the name server addresses as
part of the information coming back from the LinkSys DCHP server. When you
disabled DHCP on the box, it was no longer getting those name server
addresses. So, if you didn't specify name server addresses yourself, the
only way you're going to be able to contact the outside world is via IP
addresses.
(I'll bet the LinkSys box was getting its network settings from a DHCP
server at your cable company, and those DHCP settings included addresses
of DNS servers that were then being passed along to your RH box by the
DHCP server in the LinkSys box.)
I think this could be an easy problem to fix!
Eric Chevalier

Eric,

I do have the same DNS settings for the RH box, the Windows box, and the
router, and I have changed both RH and Windows back to getting dynamic
IP's. THAT part is working, including getting the right DNS information.
However, name lookups only work with ping and nslookup (and host on RH),
but not with the browser.

Aaaaargh.

-Michelle

[Eric Chevalier]

Michelle,

Post by Michelle Lowman
I do have the same DNS settings for the RH box, the Windows box, and
the router, and I have changed both RH and Windows back to getting
dynamic IP's. THAT part is working, including getting the right DNS
information. However, name lookups only work with ping and nslookup
(and host on RH), but not with the browser.

What happens if you use "dig" instead of "nslookup" to try and resolve a
host name (for example: "dig tulsagrammer.com")? Does that give you an
IP address?

Also, by "browser" do you mean a Web browser (Mozilla, Netscape...)?

Eric
--
Eric Chevalier E-mail: ***@tulsagrammer.com
Web: www.tulsagrammer.com
Is that call really worth your child's life? HANG UP AND DRIVE!

[John Hough]

This doesn't sound like a dns issue from what I have read in the posts.
Can you browse by IP? A lot of people will test ping by both IP and
name, but I have seen a lot of good techs not do the same with the
browser. Did you install with the default firewall settings? Did you
make any changes to them? If you can't browse by IP, what happens if
you load a secure site by IP? It could be that port 80 is being blocked
somehow on those rh machines. Just another thought.

John

[Michelle Lowman]

Post by John Hough
This doesn't sound like a dns issue from what I have read in the posts.
Can you browse by IP? A lot of people will test ping by both IP and
name, but I have seen a lot of good techs not do the same with the
browser. Did you install with the default firewall settings? Did you
make any changes to them? If you can't browse by IP, what happens if
you load a secure site by IP? It could be that port 80 is being blocked
somehow on those rh machines. Just another thought.
John

I have tried both IPs and hostnames with both ping and with a browser
(Galeon and Mozilla). IPs and hostnames work with ping, but the browser
will only work with IPs. I didn't initially make any changes to the
firewall, but I did check it earlier today to make sure port 80 is open.

Another person suggested rerunning network config scripts. I've done that
with both of the NICs that I have in that machine, and still have the same
problems with both of them.

-Michelle

[Phil Savoie]

Post by Michelle Lowman

Post by John Hough
This doesn't sound like a dns issue from what I have read in the posts.
Can you browse by IP? A lot of people will test ping by both IP and
name, but I have seen a lot of good techs not do the same with the
browser. Did you install with the default firewall settings? Did you
make any changes to them? If you can't browse by IP, what happens if
you load a secure site by IP? It could be that port 80 is being blocked
somehow on those rh machines. Just another thought.
John

I have tried both IPs and hostnames with both ping and with a browser
(Galeon and Mozilla). IPs and hostnames work with ping, but the browser
will only work with IPs. I didn't initially make any changes to the
firewall, but I did check it earlier today to make sure port 80 is open.
Another person suggested rerunning network config scripts. I've done that
with both of the NICs that I have in that machine, and still have the same
problems with both of them.
-Michelle

Hi Michelle,

You wouldn't happen to have running nscd would you? The naming services
caching daemon may be the culprit. Perhaps a pkill of nscd might help?

Phil

[Robert]

So, pinging hostnames and ip's works.. what about ssh or telnet or
ftp? Other apps from the command line? Other GUI apps? is it ONLY the
browser that is having the hostname problems?

That sounds extremely odd.... I would suggest that maybe your browser
has some sort of proxy configured, if it was only one browser...but two
browsers have the same problem... What about lynx? the bare text-only
browser? can you hostname surf there?

Rob Day

Post by Phil Savoie

Post by Michelle Lowman

Post by John Hough
This doesn't sound like a dns issue from what I have read in the posts.
Can you browse by IP? A lot of people will test ping by both IP and
name, but I have seen a lot of good techs not do the same with the
browser. Did you install with the default firewall settings? Did you
make any changes to them? If you can't browse by IP, what happens if
you load a secure site by IP? It could be that port 80 is being blocked
somehow on those rh machines. Just another thought.
John

I have tried both IPs and hostnames with both ping and with a browser
(Galeon and Mozilla). IPs and hostnames work with ping, but the browser
will only work with IPs. I didn't initially make any changes to the
firewall, but I did check it earlier today to make sure port 80 is open.
Another person suggested rerunning network config scripts. I've done that
with both of the NICs that I have in that machine, and still have the same
problems with both of them.
-Michelle

Hi Michelle,
You wouldn't happen to have running nscd would you? The naming services
caching daemon may be the culprit. Perhaps a pkill of nscd might help?
Phil