[sclug] Googlemail issue on Debian

[Neil Haughton]

Houston, I have a problem.

Debian Squeeze:

For no obvious reason, I can suddenly no longer connect to GoogleMail on my
home box, using any browser of choice. It's not an obvious networking issue
per se because I can browse almost anywhere else I choose, and I can use
Googlemail on my smartphone over the same router using a WiFi connection. I
haven't changed any configuration settings myself, but I notice that Debian
updates no longer work (I get an error message whenever I try to download
and install the suggested updates - something about a malformed something
or other). These two issues may be related - but does anyone have any ideas
why this should be so? My main concern is the GoogleMail issue because my
wife is tearing her (and my) hair out as a result. ("This never happened
when we had Windows!", etc etc :-)).

Any useful suggestions appreciated. BTW I can't ping mail.google.com  and
traceroute fails to reach it as well, if that helps.

TIA

Neil