Assigning a fixed IP-address and a nicer hostname

For the following procedures, you either need to be logged in on the Beaglebone (via ssh or so), or you can edit the files on the uSD card before you plug it in the BeagleBone. In the latter case, make sure to include the full path to the respective files on the uSD card! I accidentally changed the files on my computer once...

Fixed IP-address

While logged in on the beaglebone, edit the etc/network/interfaces file to make it look something like this (assuming your router is at 192.168.0.1)

# primary network interface
auto eth0
# iface eth0 inet dhcp
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.0.123
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.0.0
broadcast 192.168.0.255
gateway 192.168.0.1
dns-nameservers 192.168.0.1

After a restart, your BeagleBone will have the IP-address 192.168.0.123.

Nice hostname

This is strictly optional. But on some networks, you can talk to a computer via it's hostname. It makes sense to try if your homenetwork supports this.

Edit the hosts file on your BeagleBone:

sudo nano /etc/hosts

and make it look like

127.0.0.1       localhost
127.0.1.1       bbb-bob

Then save, exit, and edit the hostname file as well:

sudo nano /etc/hostname

Put a single line in it, that only contains your hostname:

bbb-bob

Save, exit, and you're done! After a restart, the BeagleBone will have the hostname "bbb-bob". You can try to ping this hostname with a Windows computer:

ping bbb-bob.mshome.net

But usually, this does not work.