Network Disconnection

Right. So you are using ubuntu and your get heartily pissed off with Network Manager, so you switch to Wicd. All fun and games until you try to assign a manual IP address and then go back to DHCP. Then, for reasons which I will set out below, evolution starts prompting you for your password constantly. The internet works, but you cannot browse your local network shares.

Oh joy.

Now, this type of problem screams DNS error. You can test this by alternately pinging the IP address of your server, and then the Name of your server. If the former works but not the latter you have a DNS lookup problem.

It turns out that when Wicd gets a hold of the DNS settings for Ubuntu it fubars them and doesn't put them back the way they ought to be. In ubuntu the DNS settings are stored in the file:

/etc/resolv.conf

In order to work properly this needs to have the following lines above the nameserver line comme ca:

domain mylocaldomain.local
search mylocaldomain.local
nameserver [IP of DNS server]