[SLUG] SUSE 9

[Chris Sutcliffe]

Thanks to Jamie I have installed SUSE 9 on my friend Brian's PC (Carl
sent me a DVD with 9.1 but my friend only has a CDRom drive - thanks
anyway Carl, I will be using it on another machine soon so it won't be
wasted). 

It is a perfect distro for a newbie. Brian is very happy and has gone
from someone who left the use of a PC to his daughters when Windows XP
was installed, to actually using it himself. 

I popped a DivX movie cd into his drive and watched his eyes widen as
the movie started to play automatically - "brilliant" he exclaimed. His
reaction when I stuck some .mp3's on his drive and showed him Juk was
even better. I set up an internet account (more on this in a mo) and his
email and he was very happy with how easy it was to get online. Brian
also likes the look of his new desktop.

All in all a great success then? Well, not quite. I did get him online
with UKLinux.net but his original ISP was Freeserve (Wannado?) with
their penny-per-minute account and this is where I had problems.

I used SUSE's own setup for Freeserve and checked that the number was
the same as the one that he used on Windows - it was, fine then. I
clicked on connect and the modem would dial up and attempt to connect
and then, suddenly disconnect. I tried the connection again and viewed
the log and it said that the login details were incorrect. I checked the
details with Brian and they were fine but just to be sure he telephoned
Freeserve and they confirmed that they were connect. I was also able to
collect his email when connected to UKLinux.net using the same username
and password...strange.

I googled for an answer and found that others were having problems and
came accross advice to make sure that nothing existed in
'/etc/ppp/options' especially a 'lock' file. I had a look in /etc/ppp
and found options to be a file and not the directory I expected. I
viewed the file and found a 'lock' statement. As the advice said that
optons shouldn't contain anything, I renamed it (rather than delete it)
and attempted the connection again with the same result. 

Brian is still able to get on the net via UKLinux.net but would like to
connect via Freeserve and benefit from his penny-per-minute account.
Could anyone here offer any suggestions?

btw: I will return the disks soon Jamie, thanks.


regards

Chris
-- 
Chris Sutcliffe
Linux User #160319
<chris at snbcomputers.com>
Scarborough LUG <http://www.scarborough.lug.org.uk/>