[SOLVED] Can/Can't get to network/internet

[Tovian]

This is just plain weird - and I know the problem is probably something really small that I either didn't do - or did wrong.

I can get to my local network and out to the internet with NO PROBLEMS when I use any of my older (logon) accounts. But when I log onto any of my new* accounts I can only reach certain sites (like GOOGLE). I can't even ping other computers on my LAN. Now that doesn't make any sense at all to me. But, I can get to Google, Yahoo, and lots of websites... but I cannot get to many. I was not even able to get to this forum. I had to log out of the new account and go back into my old one in order to post this problem.

If the behavior I am seeing was consistent across all accounts I would have an idea where to start looking. But, since this seems to be account-specific I just don't know where to look next.

Thanks in advance for all your help and time !!

* New account = normal, standard account I created yesterday (nothing special)

[kjpetrie]

From the new account, can you ping other machines on your LAN if you su to another account? What about su to root?

[YouCanToo]

This is just plain weird - and I know the problem is probably something really small that I either didn't do - or did wrong.

I can get to my local network and out to the internet with NO PROBLEMS when I use any of my older (logon) accounts. But when I log onto any of my new* accounts I can only reach certain sites (like GOOGLE). I can't even ping other computers on my LAN. Now that doesn't make any sense at all to me. But, I can get to Google, Yahoo, and lots of websites... but I cannot get to many. I was not even able to get to this forum. I had to log out of the new account and go back into my old one in order to post this problem.

If the behavior I am seeing was consistent across all accounts I would have an idea where to start looking. But, since this seems to be account-specific I just don't know where to look next.

Thanks in advance for all your help and time !!

* New account = normal, standard account I created yesterday (nothing special)

on your new account try to go to this address  http://http://199.231.58.82/forum/
This is the ip address of our forum.

[Tovian]

kjpetrie and YouCanToo...

Those were great suggestions. Last night and this morning I tried all the combinations you suggested and others I thought of. Before I could reply with my results I completely forked up the user-id so I've had to start over.

My tests were demonstrating that I had some "permissions" problems - imagine that !! Anyway, there were a few things on my desktop I could not update - I did not have permission. Those were things I had copied from a different user account so it kinda made sense. I checked the properties on one of the items and it showed that the owner was the old account. I thought I could fix that by changing the owner. I logged on as root; I right-clicked the /home/newaccount folder; I selected properties; I tabbed to permissions; I made sure the ownership reflected the newaccount; I checked the apply-changes-to-all... box; and hit OK. I quickly learned not to EVER do that again !! When I logged out of root and back into newaccount the ownership of everything on the desktop had been changed to ROOT - not newaccount.

Trying to back out of that - if it's even possible - seemed more of a project than I can handle at my level so I decided to kill newaccount and start over. I am posting this reply from newaccount2 so already I have done more things right than I did last time. I believe all my initial problems had to do with copying things from the old account but not understanding how to change permissions/ownership correctly. All I was trying to do was duplicate my old account but use a new name. Copying items from one folder to another apparently drags some of the old attributes (ownership, etc.) to the new location and that causes problems for the new account. I'm sure there are ways to do this but I don't have those skills - yet.

I'll mark this thread "solved" and hope that newaccount2 has better luck (but with me driving that might be too much to hope for).

[Edit] I'm taking things a bit slower this time and all is well. I'm checking/changing permissions as I go and am having no problems.

Thanks, again, for your time and help.

[YouCanToo]

kjpetrie and YouCanToo...

Those were great suggestions. Last night and this morning I tried all the combinations you suggested and others I thought of. Before I could reply with my results I completely forked up the user-id so I've had to start over.

My tests were demonstrating that I had some "permissions" problems - imagine that !! Anyway, there were a few things on my desktop I could not update - I did not have permission. Those were things I had copied from a different user account so it kinda made sense. I checked the properties on one of the items and it showed that the owner was the old account. I thought I could fix that by changing the owner. I logged on as root; I right-clicked the /home/newaccount folder; I selected properties; I tabbed to permissions; I made sure the ownership reflected the newaccount; I checked the apply-changes-to-all... box; and hit OK. I quickly learned not to EVER do that again !! When I logged out of root and back into newaccount the ownership of everything on the desktop had been changed to ROOT - not newaccount.

Open a console window as the root user and use the following format

chown username:username filename

if you want to change everything in and including folder owner use this

chown -R username:username foldername

Trying to back out of that - if it's even possible - seemed more of a project than I can handle at my level so I decided to kill newaccount and start over. I am posting this reply from newaccount2 so already I have done more things right than I did last time. I believe all my initial problems had to do with copying things from the old account but not understanding how to change permissions/ownership correctly. All I was trying to do was duplicate my old account but use a new name. Copying items from one folder to another apparently drags some of the old attributes (ownership, etc.) to the new location and that causes problems for the new account. I'm sure there are ways to do this but I don't have those skills - yet.

To change permissions of a file or folder use this

chmod xxx filename or chmod xxx foldername

where xxx is a numeric value for RWX

Folders are normally set to 755 or rwx r-x r-x  Example. chmod 755 foldername
Regular user files normally have the permissions of 664 or rw- rw- r-- Example chmod 664 filename

I'll mark this thread "solved" and hope that newaccount2 has better luck (but with me driving that might be too much to hope for).

[Edit] I'm taking things a bit slower this time and all is well. I'm checking/changing permissions as I go and am having no problems.

Thanks, again, for your time and help.

[Tovian]

Open a console window as the root user and...

Excellent instructions... Thank You very much !!

When working in Windows I often drop into a DOS/CMD window. I still know those commands well enough to do almost anything I need to do. I doubt I will ever gain that level of proficiency with Linux - but I'm working at it.

I am still getting everything settled with newaccount-2. All is going well. To change ownership/permissions this time I was starting Dolphin as SU (kdesu...); right-clicking on a file/folder; selecting properties; tabbing to permissions; and checking what I wanted (and/or typing in the name of the new owner). I was really afraid of doing it that way because I hurt myself so badly with newaccount-1. But things seem to work correctly when logged in as newaccount-2 and SU'ing Dolphin. The first time I messed things up I was logged in as root. I would not have thought the results would be different but they certainly seem to be.

Thanks again !!