Hi all. I downloaded drivers for my wireless internet USB device from http://at76c503a.berlios.de/. I then followed all the instructions, setup my device using iwconfig, etc. I used Konqerour to visit my router page ( 192.168.2.1 ) which displayed fine, and I made some minimal changes to my network. However, when attempting to visit google.com, Mozilla says 'www.google.com cannot be found'. Help please  :-\

Most likely your DNS entries are wrong.  Try to resolve google from the command line.  If that works, you've got some weird Mozilla problem (or your name resolution is very spotty).  What's in your resolv.conf(5)?

Is that an Atmel driver?  Three different Linux distros, and I was never able to get my Atmel-based USB wireless connector to work via either NDISWrapper or native Linux drivers for the Atmel chipset.  I have since successfully gotten NDISWrapper to work in both Slackware 10.1 and Fedora Core 4 for a Linksys PCI wifi card and a built-in onboard miniPCI wifi card (the brand name escapes me at the moment).

I wish I had better news for you.

And why didn't you put this in the "Computer Support Issues" forum at the very top?

I thought I did, sorry  :-\

Also, resolv.conf says

searchsite google.com

(or whatever it is, searchsite, this is off the top of my head, modified from example.com)

Perhaps I will just run ethernet wire if all else fails  :(

If you can get to your router's page, your wireless is clearly working fine.  Like Kp said, it's a problem with resolv.conf. 

Mine looks like this:
[quote]iago@slayer:~$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
nameserver 4.2.2.1
nameserver 4.2.2.2
[/quote]

I suggest adding your favorite DNS servers (typically your router; otherwise, 4.2.2.1-8 work nicely) to resolv.conf. 

so i can remove the search part and it will look like
[code]
nameserver 192.168.2.1
[/code]

Put those nameservers in there just incase 192.168.2.1 doesn't resolve host names to IPs.

tried 4.2.2.1
[quote]
The connection was refused when attempting to contact www.google.com
[/quote]

From a commandline, run:

ping 4.2.2.1 -- just to make sure you're getting out of the network.

If that works,
host www.google.ca -- it's probably failing to resolve?

[code]
bash-3.00# ping 4.2.2.1
    connect: network is unavailable
bash-3.00# ping google.com
ping: unknown host goole.com
[/code]
No idea, mozilla still gives me 'google.com was not found'

You are having problems getting off your lan, apparently. 

Can you run 2 commands for me, and paste the output here?

ifconfig
route

Thanks

give me a break if something is spelled wrong, I hand wrote down and then copied everything =P
[pre]
bash-3.00#>ifconfig
lo Link encap: local loopback
    inet addr: 127.0.0.1 mask: 255.0.0.0
    UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
    RX Packets: 4 errors: 0 dropped: 0 overruns: 0 frame: 0
    TX Packets: 4 errors: 0 dropped: 0 overruns: 0 carrier: 0
    collisions: 0 txqueuelen: 0
wlan0 link encap: Ethernet HWaddr 00:30:BD:64:01:D9
          inet addr: 192.168.2.62 bcast: 192.168.2.255 mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MTU:1500 Metric:1
          RX packets: 716 errors: 0 dropped: 0 overruns: 0 frame: 0
          TX Packets: 729 errors: 0 dropped: 0 overruns: 0 carrier: 0
          colissions: 0 txqueulen:1000
          RX bytesL 103789 tx bytesL 53928
bash-3.00#>route
Kernel IP routing table
Destination    Gateway    Genmask        Flags  Metric    Ref  Use    Iface
[color=red]192.168.2.0        *        255.255.255.0      U        0          0      0      wlan0[/color]
[color=blue]loopback            *        255.0.0.0              U        0          0      0        lo[/color]
[/pre]

All right, try running the command:

route add default gw <router> metric 1

I think in your case:
route add default gw 192.168.2.1 metric 1

If you want to see a configuration file that I use, have a look at this:
http://www.javaop.com/~iago/home-wireless.sh
I have nothing being automatically configured, if I intend to use wireless I run that script.  Yes, it has my wireless key in the file, but if anybody wants to sit outside my house and use it, well, just knock on the door and introduce yourself to me, and you can use it from my office :P

I use 128-Bit WEP encryption, is that a problem..?

I believe that's what I'm using. 

Did you run the "route add ..." command and try again?

i will, i have to reboot to do it (its on this hdd, partition 2) and im kind of busy right now  :P

Ok, I suspect that that's your problem. Your route table is missing the entry to route to the rest of the world. 

omg! im on slackware right now!  :o iago you rock, thanks a lot for your support!

No problem :)

I recommend modifying the script that I posted, I find it very handy :)