Ubuntu 14.04 Static IP and Static DNS

Set up Static IP and Static DNS on Ubutunu 14.04

Many people seem to jump through a lot of hoops to figure this out, but according to the instructions on Ubuntu’s site, you update the following:

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

This is the default file:

# This file...
# and how to activate...

# The loopback...
auto local
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface 
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

This is the updated file below “# The primary network interface”. Replace x’s with your IPs, of course. Also, Google’s DNS servers shown as example.

#iface eth0 inet dhcp
iface eth0 inet static
address x.x.x.x
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway x.x.x.x

#nameservers
# you may not need dns-search
# I use it because I'm running this on a Windows network 
# so its useful to have
# dns-search x.y 
dns-nameservers 4.4.4.4 8.8.8.8

Works every time for me. That said, I don’t know why there are so many other ways people do this and that makes me think I’m missing something. Let me know below if you agree/disagree.