[olpc-community-support] Getting started as a new user

[Josh Bluestein]

Hi all --

I received my XO yesterday and have played around with it a little
bit...but it's not quite as automatic and easy to use as I thought it
would be, so I worry that I may be doing something wrong.

A little background:  I am a moderately savvy Linux user.  I've built
and maintained a variety of Unix flavors over the years, but I
wouldn't call myself a real system hacker.  I don't mind getting my
hands dirty if I have to, though.

Anyway:  I was pretty easily able to connect to my wireless access
point (a Netgear wireless router running WEP).  However, attempting to
browse the internet, I wasn't able to get anywhere.

I found ifconfig and determined that I couldn't get anywhere because I
didn't have a locally assigned IP address.  So I ran dhclient and had
one assigned to me...

But I still can't get anywhere-- I think I'm getting DNS errors.  I
imagine I could sort this out, figuring out the right setup, but I'm
concerned that this is indicative of some other problem.  Shouldn't it
just do DHCP setup automatically when I start it up?  Is there
something I'm missing?

Like I said, I don't mind doing the work if I need to, but I just want
to make sure I'm not missing something obvious.  My goal is to hand
this laptop off to my kid (who is still probably too young for it, but
won't be that way forever), so the easier the setup is the happier
I'll be.

Thanks!
Josh