Dialup and Nameservice question--Can't Lookup Names

[Michael M. Dougherty]

Folks,

I upgraded (not fresh install) to 8.0 (official boxed set) from 7.2 a couple days ago, and am quite impressed by the process and the product (but I'm an enduser so no real great expertise is implied). The only trouble I have is in my dialup connection.

I had been using kppp, but now it can make the connection, and I can use it, so long as I know IP addresses. In other words, my new setup isn't talking to the nameservers, I guess. I can ping them and other sites by IP, and browse by IP, etc., just not by name. I tried >host swosu.edu (my work) <nameserver IP> and it still said cannot connect to any hosts.

I then tried playing around with the System settings--> Network menu, and started over creating PPP0, but I must be doing something wrong. I tried to read from the help menu on that app, but it crashed before I could read the DNS instructions and won't come up again. I had entered a primary and secondary DNS, but admit ignorance about what some of the boxes are for. For instance, I both left blank and played around with:

DNS--> Hostname? (IIRC--I'm at work at the moment--this is over the Primary/Secondary DNS Entry spot)
DNS Searchpath? (Again, I have entries for primary and secondary, by IP)
Search Domain?

IIRC there was another "host" menu, which I left as default localhost.localdomain, etc.

Now this time I installed a lot more stuff, and I wonder if I installed too much. My /etc/rc.d/init.d/ now has a dhcpd and named. I wonder if my machine is asking itself instead of the proper authorities for some of this information? I tried stopping them both and the situation did not change.

Sorry if it's a dumb question. Any help would be appreciated.

Sincerely,
Mike Dougherty