Lynx "Alert!: Unable to connect to remote host."

Question

I'm pretty new to Ubuntu server. I'm running

Distributor ID:
Ubuntu Description:
Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS Release: 12.04

I have installed Lynx via

sudo apt-get install lynx

everything installed fine but when I try to connect to a website it just seems to time out.

When I run lynx google.com it goes to a blank screen with a blue line at the bottom. There is yellow text on the line which says

"Making HTTP connection to google.com"

but it just sits there.

Eventually after 5 - 6 minutes it just goes back to the normal terminal window

If I run the below on its own

lynx

I get the same blue line with the same text

"Making HTTP connection to google.com"

but after 30 seconds or so it briefly turns to a red line with

"alert!: lynx unable to connect to remote host"

written on it.

I have installed lynx locally and it works fine.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Answer 1

With help from the above comments and answers I found the issue. My /etc/enviroments file was blank. I followed the instructions in this question

How do I configure proxies without GUI?

Hope this helps someone else

Answer 2

Try the following:

lynx -source http://www.google.com | sh

Chek also ~/.lynx maybe there is something wrong with the proxy settings.