Network settings for Linux at the shell prompt (terminal).

These are the manual settings for networking a Linux machine.

You should also have installed and setup the network card in the Linux machine as eth0 or eth1 (see Linux Ethernet-HOWTO if you don't know how to do it). Most Linux distributions do this automatically when you install Linux.

Before you start you can see how Linux automatically configured your network card by typing ifconfig, as shown in this example.

To do it at the shell prompt you need to create or edit a series of files as follows:

• /etc/hostname
  LINUX-NAME      ... name of your machine without domain, e.g. PCLinux.

• /etc/hosts
  127.0.0.1         localhost
  192.168.0.1      gateway      ... the name of the default gateway machine
  192.168.0.x      LINUX-NAME     ... the IP and name of the Linux machine
  .............     xxxxxxxxxx        ... IP and name of all machines with fixed IP in LAN

• /etc/resolv.conf
  nameserver     192.168.0.x      ... the DNS server machine

• /etc/network/interfaces ... define the network configuration
  auto lo      ....start automatically the loopback interface
  iface lo inet loopback      ....define the i(nter)face lo inet (IPv4) loopback
  iface eth1 inet dhcp      ....define the i(nter)face eth1 inet (IPv4) static (or dhcp)
  address 192.168.0.x     .... the machine IP address
  gateway 192.168.0.1     .... the gateway IP address
  netmask 255.255.255.0     .... the netmask
  network 192.168.0.0     .... the network IP address
  broadcast 192.168.0.255     .... the broadcast IP address
  auto eth1      ........start automatically the eth1 interface
  

• How to stop, start, restart an interface: ifdown and ifup: a Wiki about it.

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