just got DSL, can't surf or get mail

[albi at scii.nl]

On Sun, 03 Apr 2005 20:06:16 -0500
Brian John <brianjohn at fusemail.com> wrote:

> Ok, I think you may have pointed me to the source of the problem. 
> Here  is what my resolv.conf looks like after every time I reboot my
> compuer: search domain.actdsltmp
> nameserver 192.168.0.1
> nameserver 205.171.3.65
> 
> Now, if I change it to this (using my secondary DNS server from my DSL
>  modem's 'setup' page):
> search domain.actdsltmp
> nameserver 205.171.2.65
> 
> ...everything works.  Is there a way that I could keep this from 
> changing every time that I reboot my computer?

this looks like your DSL-modem has a router-function (with DHCP and a
non-working DNS-server) or your ISP does hand out DHCP to you and
something goes wrong, or your ISP does not use DHCP and something else
goes wrong with the resolv.conf

what you can do is to put a line in /etc/rc.local which says this 
cp /etc/resolv.conf.good /etc/resolv.conf
where /etc/resolv.conf.good is your working resolv.conf

if DHCP is in use, either on your modem or by your ISP, then there's
normally a lease-time (if it's say e.g. 5 minutes, then your
/etc/resolv.conf will be overwritten) so you could turn the above line
into a cronjob

HTH