[szee]

How i said i'm a newbie and i lost my internet connection on my debian etch trying to change to a static ip address .

i modified etc/networks/interfaces but is not working , i don't know how to make it work again ( the internet )

I must type a desired ip address or what ?

[DotHQ]

Hopefully you saved a copy of the interfaces file before you modified it. Just put it back in place.
If you didn't save a copy before you modified it, remember, for next time, always save a backup copy of your config files before making changes.
Did you supply static IP to start with? If not you might have DHCP turned on. All you have to do in that case is to restore the file as it was before you modified it, and restart the network service or reboot. Either should work.

[szee]

i don't have the old file , i lost the previous configuration , i had all the time a different ip address so i decided to make it static but is not so easy for me

[szee]

is working again as dynamic ip with this configuration :

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

but still no idea how to make it static ip

[coopstah13]

are you part of a network? or is this IP being provided to you by your ISP? if it is being provided to you by your isp then chances are you can't make it static, if you are on a private network of some kind with a network ip and a gateway you should be able to configure it statically as long as the dhcp server doesn't try to assign that ip to someone else you would be ok

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address w.x.y.z
gateway w.x.y.z
dns-nameserver w.x.y.z
dns-search your-domain
broadcast w.x.y.z
netmask w.x.y.z

most of these values can be figured out from the ifconfig command, you will have to look at the contents of /etc/resolv.conf for the dns information