Firefox or Routing?

I'm having a problem with Firefox.

Sorry for being long winded but I think it's all relevant.

Our company has decided to switch over to Linux. Because I have experience with it, I installed Arch on a machine at our office and everything was working well. The machine is to replace the existing Windows machine at the owners home. When he gets it home the VPN (kvpnc with the PPTP client) connects but you can't do anything with the connection. I'm reasonably sure that it's a routing issue.(the tunnelIP doesn't match what the Netopia Router is supposed to assign it.) I think I can manage this problem but any info would still be appreciated.

The thing that really stumps me is that Firefox works perfectly in the office but won't connect to the internet at the owners home. Konqueror works great at both locations. After I "prime" the connection with Konqueror, Firefox will work for about 3 or 4 pages and then quits again. I've been involved with computers since the days of the TI-99-4A and I've never encountered anything like this. I'm totally stumped.

My attempts to repair this have been to uninstall the Arch version of Firefox, Bon Echo, and do a manual install from Mozilla.org. At that point Firefox wouldn't even open so, with the help of their wiki, I found that I needed to install libstdc++5. That got the new Firefox working at the office again but when he took it home, it still had the same problem.

There are only two significant differences between the office and home. First is the subnet. The office is 192.168.1. and his home is 192.168.0. I'm told that they are required to be different for the VPN connection. Second, the office uses a netopia router which really shouldn't make any difference. Both sites are on DSL provided by Qwest.

Could the Firefox issue be a routing issue and related to the VPN issue?

Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

 

I'm afraid I'll be no help at all on the solution... but in case you don't find any clear answer on here, you might want to try asking in an IRC channel - I'm not sure what channel or server would be best for your issue, but you might want to try the irc.mozilla.org server. I'd expect someone in one of the (many) channels on there might be able to help - assuming it's something resolvable with FF anyway.

 

Thanks BigShot. I'll give it a try.

 

Update:

I took the computer to my home where I have Comcast. I set my subnet to 192.168.0. I started the Arch machine and Firefox worked fine but the VPN still doesn't work.

I was mistaken in my previous post. The IP assigned by the VPN is correct. I was looking at the Tunnel IP not the ppp0 IP. But when I'm connected, I can't access anything in the office.

 

Shnerdly,

This may be a better question for the networking forum.

:major

 

Yea, It started out with Firefox as the main problem but that seems to be solved and the VPN issue remains. At first I thought they were connected but I guess their not. Maybe I should start a new thread?

The VPN problem is definitely a network issue but will require specific knowledge of Linux I'm afraid. I'm having what I think are routing issues with kvpnc and the pptp-client and they are both unique to Linux. I don't have any problems with the VPN on my windows machine. I did some research on the Arch Wiki and I now have some things to try over the weekend. I hope they work.

 

I have solved the problem with some assistance.

The VPN was connecting but I couldn't go anywhere once I was connected. I found a help page that suggested running the following command after establishing the connection.

route add -net 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 dev ppp0

I ran the command and the VPN is now working. I knew it was a routing problem but couldn't figure out what to add to the routing table until now.

Anyway, I just thought I'd post the cure for anyone else having such an issue.