If kppp dials in with my modem under root no problems. However if I dial in under my username the modem dials and seems to connect but mozilla mail doesn't download my mail. It comes up with a message resolving host pop.ihug.co.nz and stays there and doesn't download my mail . I have changed my permisions on /dev/modem and made sure I have the correct permissions for Mozilla mail and it also seems I have the same problem web browsing does anybody know what files I would have to change the permissions on. It may be a stupid question but I don't know.
What this sounds like is a problem resolving if you dial in as a user, not as root. To test this, try connecting to the Internet as your username, and open up a terminal and issue the following command: /bin/ping -c 5 202.27.184.3 This will send 5 ICMP ping packets to one of xtra's nameservers (which you should be able to ping from anywhere). If this doesn't work, it either means that your ISP is brokenly firewalling ICMP, or that you haven't in fact connected. If this does work fine, then the problem is probably that your resolver isn't being set correctly when you log in as your user. If you could issue the following commands (while you are dialed in as your user) and give us the output it would be good ls -la /etc/resolv.conf cat /etc/resolv.conf