When configuring network settings for an ubuntu server, you simply edit the /etc/network/interfaces with the correct information. If you make changes there, then you need to add the DNS manually, in the /etc/resolv.conf file. Nice and easy right?

Canonical has changed the way that the resolv.conf file works, without any comments to let you know. If you make changes to resolv.conf, the changes will be overwritten it tells you. So how do you make these changes? Right inside the network/interfaces file. All you need to do is add some lines at the bottom of the file fo the DNS, here you simply put what would be in the resolv.conf file.

So it would look like:

domain domain.com
search domain.com
nameserver 8.8.8.8

This makes it much simpler to set up networking properly on the server. It would be nice if they let you know.