Many thanks - Norbert in particular Changing the options file to initiate ppp on the ISP machine - I just inserted the line $ ppp to the options file and it worked perfectly.
As an experiment and to ensure that all my "playing" didn't upset anything else I restarted the installation using the recovery disc except that immediately prior to selecting the access method when prompted by dselect I started another shell, logged as root and edited the ppp files. I then initiated the connection using pon and staying logged on in the second shell ( is this necessary ??? ) reverted to the shell running dselect and selected ftp etc... My, my, my ... ain't this world wonderful - a long, long time later the entire default Debian default selection of files was downloaded and my Debian GNU Linux system is now reasonably functional - now to download some software to make it do things !! Many thanks once more to those people who replied - the problem was easily solved once given some experienced guidance !!! I look forward to learning much, much more and repaying your effort by, sometime in the future, assisting another "newbie" Ivan. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
