Static settings

After reading your excellent article in LXF222 on creating a Debian home server, I hoped you may be able to give me some guidance, or point me to some tutorials regarding a project I’d like to take on. I have an old Shuttle XPC (3GHz, 4GB DDR2 800 RAM, 500GB hard drive) and I’d like to use this Shuttle as a home file server. I find Debian a little intimidating and use Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on all our home machines.

I’m falling at the first hurdle and seem unable to assign a static IP address. To complicate matters further my kids are asking if they can have a home Minecraft server on the Shuttle so they can both play in the same ‘world’.

Any guidance here would be appreciated, because my knowledge of networks is poor, and the examples I’ve come across on the web seem to cover Ubuntu 16.04 Server. Neil Ellis, via email Jonni says: Desktop Ubuntu uses the NetworkManager helper, rather than the old-fashioned /etc/network/interfaces file to configure network settings. Although if you put the required entry in this file, NetworkManager will be polite enough not to override it. You can set up a static IP from the desktop though, click the network icon in the top-right, and find the settings for your wired connection. Change the Addresses setting from Manual to Automatic.

You’ll need to find out your router’s IP, which probably will be either 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.1.254, I’ll go with the first one here, but change it as necessary (it goes in the DNS Server and Gateway boxes). You can find out with the routel command. Find the IPv4 tab and fill in the details. The other settings you need are:

Address: 192.168.1.<any number you like between 2 and 253> Netmask: 255.255.255.0 Or just fill in /etc/network/ interfaces as described in the Debian tutorial. There’ll be no problem running a Minecraft server alongside other services.