How to configure eth0 manually?

How to manually configure eth0 in Ubuntu? I don't have any DHCP server. Do I need IP address when I am just going to capture packets?

Solution 1:

I am not sure what you exactly mean by your question. The real manual method has been described above, but since you write you don't have DHCP, I think you rather would like to know what to do to give your box a static IP address and assign this IP address at boot time automatically. Well, here is how:

There should be a file /etc/network/interfaces. This file is read by the Ubuntu boot scripts which in turn configure the network according to that file. If you would like to know what should / could go into that file, then please type "man interfaces".

For example, my /etc/network/interfaces looks like this (comments are cut out):

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
        address 192.168.20.20
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        network 192.168.20.0
        broadcast 192.168.20.255
        gateway 192.168.20.250

The first two lines are standard and may already look similar on your box. You may be interested especially in the rest of the file: These lines define a static network configuration to eth0 (without DHCP), and this static configuration gets active automatically on every boot.

Solution 2:

You may want to try this as well:

1. sudo -H gedit /etc/network/interfaces

2. Edit the eth0

   auto eth0
   iface eth0 inet dhcp
   

3. Save and Exit

4. Run sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart.