Don't forget to add the options: dns-nameservers dns-search Otherwise you may not be able to resolve DNS. Doug <div class="gmail_quote">On Oct 26, 2014 8:26 AM, "Dotan Cohen" <<a href="mailto:dotancohen@gmail.com">dotancohen@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">I need to ensure that a particular machine has a static IP address. Is this the right way to configure /etc/network/interfaces? auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static address 10.0.0.7 netmask 255.255.255.0 gateway 10.0.0.138 The current configuration, using DHCP looks like this: $ ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 90:2b:34:a9:c5:ae inet addr:10.0.0.7 Bcast:10.0.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::922b:34ff:fea9:c5ae/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:190131 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:142571 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:130422046 (130.4 MB) TX bytes:28887979 (28.8 MB) lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:65536 Metric:1 RX packets:13281 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:13281 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:1351192 (1.3 MB) TX bytes:1351192 (1.3 MB) $ route -n Kernel IP routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface 0.0.0.0 10.0.0.138 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0 10.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 1 0 0 eth0 I'm asking here as I don't want to get into a situation where I can no longer communicate with the machine while testing different configurations. Thanks. I took the basic config skeleton from the Ubuntu server guide Network Configuration page: <a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/14.04/serverguide/network-configuration.html" target="_blank">https://help.ubuntu.com/14.04/serverguide/network-configuration.html</a> -- Dotan Cohen <a href="http://gibberish.co.il" target="_blank">http://gibberish.co.il</a> <a href="http://what-is-what.com" target="_blank">http://what-is-what.com</a> -- ubuntu-server mailing list <a href="mailto:ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-server@lists.ubuntu.com</a> <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-server</a> More info: <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam" target="_blank">https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerTeam</a> </blockquote></div>