Static Network Assignments. Well, my research has revealed that the static IP problem is a known bug in Debian 5 "Lenny," and has been known for a year. And isn't going to be fixed. Instead, it has been fixed in the experimental version of Debian, so the bug report has been marked as "closed."

Thanks a bunch, guys. It's still a bug in the current version.

The problem appears to be in Network Manager, which was added to make life easier for wireless users. The problem is, as long as it is running, it overrides the manual configuration in the /etc/network/interfaces file. Fortunately, I've previously learned about the Boot-Up Manager program, which controls which services get started at boot time. So for anyone else in this predicament, here are the relevant steps:

1. Edit (as root) the text file /etc/network/interfaces, and change the Ethernet interface (typically eth0) to static addressing. Something like this:


where, of course, the numbers will be different depending on your local network.

2. Edit (as root) the text file /etc/resolv.conf, and add "nameserver" lines like this (these are for OpenDNS):


3. Use Boot-Up Manager (bum) to disable network-manager and network-manager-dispatcher (both listed as "network manager framework daemon"). If you don't have this, you can install it from Synaptic or with "apt-get install bum".

Sound. A serendipitous find: I decided to get a minimal set of KDE configuration files by adding a new user to the system. When I logged in as that new user, it didn't have sound either! At this point a bell rang in the back of my mind, and I decided to check if access to the sound system is restricted by user group.

It is. The group is called "audio", and for some inexplicable reason, only the first user gets added to that group. To fix this, go to System->User Manager, click on the user name, click Edit, click the Groups tab, check the "audio" box, and click OK. (Damned if I know why this isn't the default for all new users.)