Comment 16 for bug 125687

Hi. I experienced this exact problem in Ubuntu 9.04, today.

While attempting to try to fix it I killed my network connection somehow and had to remove & purge package network-manager.

All is well now, though. For anyone that's a newbie like me, here's how I fixed it.

These three terminal commands were necessary:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
sudo gedit /etc/resolv.conf
sudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces

1) Restarts networking. Saves you a reboot after changing settings and trying to get it to work. Also spat out helpful debug messages - helpful in the sense I could google them, and ended up here. ;)
2) Opens config file, where you can enter your router IP. I entered this:

nameserver 192.168.1.1

3) Opens a config file, where you can set up static IP stuff. Note that I have two gigabit ethernet ports. Internet won't work unless you add "auto eth#" for the port you have plugged in. Also, according to an article I read, if your connection ever breaks after a kernel update, the kernel may have flipped how it orders interfaces, so you should try plugging the cable into the other port. I entered this:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.116
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1

iface eth1 inet static
address 192.168.1.115
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1

Works like a charm now, and Samba starts correctly at boot.