How do I set up a static IP if I have no router?

[redmk2]

...it sure does seem like there is some speck of understanding that I can't quite reach.

I believe this might be so. Did you happen to see the date of this tutorial? Like ancient history: December 29th, 1999.

I would not use anything that did not pertain directly to the distro and version of Linux you are working with. First, there have been a ton of updates since 1999. Second, not all distros are the same. Debian and Ubuntu are similar enough, but Redhat, Fedora, CentOS and SUSE are different. Most guides will only cover one flavor. In this case I am sure that the latest Ubuntu versions are different enough that you will certainly have problems with that old guide.

I think you will be better served with this guide if you are using Ubuntu 10.10 or 10.04 use this guide or if 9.10 then this guide is what you should use. Yes there are differences.

Okay, so on Desktop, I have modified the following files like so:

# /etc/network/interfaces
address 192.168.1.1
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
gateway 192.168.1.254

#/etc/resolv.conf
# Generated by NetworkManager
domain gateway.2wire.net
search gateway.2wire.net
nameserver 192.168.1.254
nameserver 8.8.8.8

And on Server, the files look like this:

#/etc/network/inferfaces
address 192.168.1.2
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.1.0
gateway 192.168.1.254

#/etc/resolv.conf
domain gateway.2wire.net
search gateway.2wire.net
nameserver 192.168.1.254
nameserver 8.8.8.8

Assuming that I set this up right, is there anything else that needs to be done?

The configuration looks correct. At this point I assume you have network connectivity. Is this correct? Can you ping each host by IP address? Do you have Internet connectivity? Can you surf the web?

If the the hosts perform correctly, the only thing left is to confirm that the configuration survives a reboot. Do the the hosts still have the correct configuration? you can check the basic configuration on each of the two hosts with this CLI command:

ifconfig -a