The other day I was trying to become 'connectable' with one of my private torrent sites. A static ip appeared to be required so I searched how to set that up via the terminal.

It seemed to work at least momentarily. Once it was 'set' I lost my wired connection. I have had the laptop directly connected to the router since the laptop is old and the wireless is a bit wobbly. The direct wired ensured I would be connected.

I want to revert back to the wired connection. Since the static ip didnt seem to help me any more than before with regards to connection and my interaction with what.cd, I figured perhaps undoing the static ip might be best.

Problem is I can't figure out how to disable it. Everywhere I look everyone answers in jargon and lingo that I am totally unfamiliar with. I just want to restore my non static (I assume DHCP) connection.

thank you

So a few missing details:

1. What distribution?

2. What steps did you take to set up the static ip?

3. What does 'momentarily' working mean? (ie what gave you the impression it was working (what tests did you do))

There is probably more but we need to start some where

1) If this is what version, I believe the latest update of ubuntu I have is 12.04
2) I followed some guide online that said to go into ifconfig and then enter in the values he had such as 255.255.255.0 (the only one I remember offhand because of the numbers) - (I am also on a different system to reply) I entered in everything the way it looked in his example
3) momentarily meant that when I first set it up I went to a page that what.cd points to called 'canyouseeme'. The page said that it could see my port connection. When I went to Transmission and checked the port it said it was open. Then later that day I noticed my wireless was shaky and the next day when I checked the port it said it was closed. NOw I can't maintain an internet connection.
I probably should have left it alone but I figured if I am pulling from a site I need to give back and this seemed to be the best way to give back.

(also, as is obvious, I am not a computer savvy person - I had linux put on an old laptop as a means to thwart malware)

thank you

It's not pretty clear from your message where the server is located. Is it on the Internet or on your home LAN? If the former then why did you try to change the network settings on the box that was behind a router? You need a static WAN not LAN ip on your router.

anyway please provide the output of
and
Root privileges might be required for that.

I am curious too as to why a not computer savvy person wouldn't stick to using the network interface provided? I am not particularly familiar with the newer versions of Ubuntu, but
i believe if you click on your name in the top left corner, one of the items in the list presented is your network connections (both wired and wireless). From within the dialog that appears after
selecting this you can check all your setting and remove the unwanted ones plus tick the box (or select drop down) that allows dhcp assigned addresses.

If you cannot find this then please proceed with above suggestion.

GodIsABuddhist, it you have just added the IP in ifconfig command, a network restart will do the trick.