27 Apr 09 Setting a static IP address for your VortexBox

It’s a good idea to have a static IP address for your VortexBox. That way you can always find it on your network by IP address. The easiest way to set a static IP is to set a fixed IP in your router. Most routers have a way to lock an IP address to a MAC address. How to do this differs widely by router.

If you don’t want to rely on your router or want you VortexBox to have an absolute fixed IP address you can use some command line utils to set it up.

1. Login to your VortexBox

2. You can see what your DHCP server (router) has already assigned the VortexBox by typing

ifconfig

3. next type

system-config-network

Select “Edit a device params” then select your network device

3 . Setup up your network. This is a basic example of how to set up your network. Use an address that is not part of the DHCP range of your router. There is an asterisk in the “Use DHCP box” by default make sure it is unchecked. Enter the IP address of your router as the default gateway.

┌────────┤ Network Configuration ├────────┐
│                                         │
│                                         │
│ Name               eth0________________ │
│ Device             eth0________________ │
│ Use DHCP           [ ]                  │
│ Static IP          192.168.1.20________ │
│ Netmask            255.255.255.0_______ │
│ Default gateway IP 192.168.1.1_________ │
│                                         │
│      ┌────┐            ┌────────┐       │
│      │ Ok │            │ Cancel │       │
│      └────┘            └────────┘       │
│                                         │
│                                         │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘

4. Select OK and save. Then select “Edit DNS configuration”

5. Leave the host name as is and change the DNS server IP addresses. In most cases you can use your routers IP address as your DNS server. This way your router will act as a DNS relay. You can also enter the DNS servers from your internet provider. A third option is to enter the OpenDNS servers. These are very fast DNS servers that are free to use

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

6. save these settings and reboot your VortexBox. It will now be on it’s new static IP address.

Note: if you want to edit your DNS servers manually you can edit the /etc/resolv.conf

nano /etc/resolv.conf

The file should look something like this

nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220