ifquery working but not ifdown or ifup

I am trying to configure my network card in Ubuntu 14.04.2 using the /etc/network/interfaces file.

The ifquery command works like a charm, always returns the right thing, but ifdown and ifup do not work until I reboot my computer and when they do, they still show error messages. I think that it might be because my file doesn't save or reload properly.

Here is what it looks like:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 10.0.0.119
netmask 255.0.0.0
gateway 10.0.0.1
dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8

If there is any information I could add please ask and I will provide as soon as I can.

It seems the interface eth0 was configured before and the address was kept persistently (for some reason) by the kernel.

To clear all addresses from interface eth0 without having to restart network services or bringing the interface up/down :

sudo ip addr flush dev eth0

Then you can use ifup to configure eth0 by reading /etc/network/interface file :

sudo ifup eth0

For verbosity :

sudo ifup -v eth0