I just installed Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop and had a very interesting time trying to configure a static IP address. There are
plenty of
discussions on the forums about how this
doesn't just work with the standard
Network Manager. And you can't just edit
/etc/network/interfaces
because that is ignored when you have Network Manager installed.
To make it work, I followed this procedure:
First, remove the Network Manager packages:
sudo apt-get remove network-manager
sudo apt-get remove gnome-netstatus-applet
Now you'll have to manually set an IP so that you can connect to the Internet (modify this to be appropriate to your setup):
sudo ifconfig eth0 10.x.x.y netmask 255.255.255.0
sudo ip route add default via 10.x.x.1
sudo vi /etc/resolv.conf
Set nameserver 10.x.x.z
appropriately. Next install the old gnome network admin tool:
sudo apt-get install gnome-network-admin
Finally use the old GUI to set networking configuration:
network-admin
This will store the network configuration in /etc/network/interfaces
where it belongs. And it seems to work when you reboot. I'll keep it this way until Network Manager is fixed.