Help! Can't connect!

[NFS276]

Hello everyone. First of all, I want to let all of you know I'm a Linux-newbie to the nth power. Seriously. So any help you give me will be appreciated! I'm really anxious to ditch Windows, but I'm having trouble installing Debian!

I downloaded the latest version of Sarge that I could find, and installed using the netinst version.
My Linux Kernel version is 2.4.27-1-386

I can successfully complete the base installation of my Debian system. That works beautifully. However, while going through that process I mus manually set my network settings as I am connected to a campus network.

When I reboot into my base system, and go to download packages, I cannot connect. Whether I pick ftp or http, and no matter the server, I always receive 'Temporary Failure Resolving Host'. I've tried logging into my superuser and running 'host google.com', 'nslookup google.com', and 'ipconfig -a' to verify that I am even getting a connection out, but each time I am confronted with 'Command Not Found'.

Now my guess is of course that my network is interferring with my outgoing connection. However, I can't even verify this as I can't run those commands. What am I doing wrong, and what do you all suggest?

Thanks in advance for your help!!

[FyberOptyx]

try giving the full path to these commands, maybe /sbin/<command>.
have you set up the dns servers in /etc/resolv.conf?

[Gnux]

When I reboot into my base system, and go to download packages, I cannot connect. Whether I pick ftp or http, and no matter the server, I always receive 'Temporary Failure Resolving Host'. I've tried logging into my superuser and running 'host google.com', 'nslookup google.com', and 'ipconfig -a' to verify that I am even getting a connection out, but each time I am confronted with 'Command Not Found'.
Thanks in advance for your help!!

Oki u must complete the /etc/resolv.conf file with the DNS servers of ur campus network (I found this odd btw coz I connect with a debian on a campus network and the dhcp server gives me all that automatically ur university haven't any dhcp server?)
Host and nslookup are commands from the DNS package (apt-cache search dns if u want it) if this package isn't installed of course it will never work
Other solutions: if u see that ur reslov.conf is fulfilled by the nice dhcp server and u got always this error maybe the DNS servers of ur campus are temporarly unavaible (maintenance stuff for ex)
Hope it helps