More Detail on PPP:

After issuing the ppp-on command, and seeing your IP number displayed, remember to issue the command:

Substitute "0.0.0.0" with the actual remote IP number that Internet Direct gives you. If you are not sure as to whether the command succeeded, issue the command: and this ought to give you confirmation that you are connected. Consult the PPP-HOWTO if you don't know how to read the output.
"Kicking PPP's Tires"
To test it out, try to ftp someplace and see if you can at least get a response from a remote server (this requires that you install the ftp package). For example, try: >on a tty or xterm window and log in as anonymous. Give your email address as the password. Sunsite is usually very busy, and logging on is sometimes difficult. But even if sunsite is telling you that there are too many connections, it still means that your computer is talking to the outside world, in order for you to even see the message printed. So you're in luck.

Arena (for X-windows) and Lynx (for tty sessions) are the standard LINUX web browsers, the former being graphics-based. If you have the latest distribution of LINUX (like RedHat, Oct '96 or later), you probably have Arena already installed. Fire up X-Windows, and issue the following command from an xterm window:

My computer takes a while to load arena. If you are running X on an old clunker of a computer, have a quick coffee. Go to the bathroom. Whatever. ...

If you are running arena for the first time, you will have to tell it where your homepage is. If you're there, great. Now try to surf to a page outside of Internet Direct. If you could get to a homepage at idirect.com but nowhere else, then this consult the PPP-HOWTO guide for hints on how to connect with the outside world.

Just as a little asside, Netscape has a version of Gold 3.01 for Linux. It is superior to Arena, and has a web editor built-in. It can be found at: ftp.netscape.com. The lastest "Netscape Communicator" (it is a much larger package, so you've been warned) can be had by clicking here.  You need to click through a series of directories to get the Linux version you want. Netscape is also smart enough to write different binaries depending on whether you have a version 1.x or 2.x kernel installed.

Still nothing?
Well, if you are still not talking to the outside world, and your tail output shows the local and remote IPs, you can still make the connecton manually using route add default gw <remoteIP>.  The tail command redirected to a console looks like: 

     tail -f /var/log/mesages > /dev/console &

You can change /dev/console to a tty that isn't running a getty, such as /dev/tty10. If /dev/tty10 is not reserved for X on your machine, then this output should not interfere with X, nor should you lose your tail output. This is useful if you are not running X at the moment, and it also allows you to use gpm to cut and paste the IP number from tty10 to a tty you are actually logged into using only a few clicks of your mouse (preferably on to a command line).

To get the remote IP number, you need to know something about gpm, and switching between ttys. If you don't know a lot about ttys and the possibility of logging on to multiple TTY shells on your PC, surf to this page:

The explanation is not exhaustive, but you should get some idea about it. More comlpete information can be found in the Serial-HOWTO or in the book Running Linux by Welsh and Kaufman.

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since Apr 1 2007