How to set up an ethernet and wireless network using /etc/network/interfaces?

Question

Currently I have ethernet and wireless networks configured through a network manager (further NM) but it seems to be a bit buggy (I need a different MAC for ether which is never applied if using NM), so I would like to move all the network configs to interfaces file. I know (or can google for) configuration code, but I'm not sure how NM works and it looks like it overrides interface config. Please advice, how I can handle this issue.

NOTE: I also would like to be able to locate and connect to various wireless networks but not sure how to do it.

Answer 1

Set managed=false in /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf to remove network interfaces control to interfaces file.

Command to stop network manager:

/etc/init.d/network-manager stop

For detailed documentation, please refer to:

• http://wiki.debian.org/NetworkManager, section #Wired Networks are Unmanaged

And for WiFi management please refer to:

• http://wiki.debian.org/WiFi/HowToUse#SwitchingConnections

Answer 2

This will help you bypass network manager's control completely.

sudoedit /etc/network/interfaces or sudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces

Replace gedit with your preferred text editor. Make sure that eth0, or whichever your networking interface is, is not commented out. Remove the # before it. As long as the interface is listed in this file, it won't matter if you've NM installed or not.