I just finished installing Ubuntu server 9.4 for my home network and I've already hit a roadblock.

I'm fairly new to Linux, but I thought that this would be a good learning tool. So please bare with my stupidity.

I've been following this how to http://www.howtoforge.com/ubuntu-home-fileserver and all has gone pretty well until I tried to set the ip to a static ip (Top of page 3 on the how to) I am trying to locate the directory /etc/network/interfaces when I try to access it it tells me permission denied and when I try to CD to it it says it "Not a directory".

Also, when I PWD it says I'm in /root and when I ls and li (installed limo) nothing shows up. When I ls/li /etc a list show up including "networks" but when I li/ls /etc/networks nothing shows up.

I know that this might be a pretty far above my head, but I'm just doing this to learn. I don't need it to work any time soon.

As always thanks for your help.

I couldn't find any, but if there is a thread that solves this problem could you please post a link an delete this one.

This should be "ls -l /etc". If you want to see the inodes of files then "ls -li /etc.

also /etc/network/interfaces is a file, not a directory.

Ubuntu is configured with the root user disabled. That could account for the permission denied. Use "sudo" to run commands as root.

I was logged in as root. The first thing I did was sudo passwd root and set password, then I logged in as root.So how would I change items in the file? I need to give the server a static ip. The how to is saying I need to edit /etc/networks/interfaces, these are the cmds given.

"# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.0.100
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.0.0
broadcast 192.168.0.255
gateway 192.168.0.1"

Just use one of the editors you've installed with the distribution.

emacs /etc/network/interfaces
vi /etc/network/interfaces
nano /etc/network/interfaces

or any GUI-based text editors, like

gedit /etc/network/interfaces

would do.

Ok, I'll try, but ubuntu server doesn't have gui right? Any way, thanks for your help I'll see how it works out.

Thank you for your help, I understand what you mean now.