Martin Gregorie wrote:

> On Sat, 05 May 2018 20:32:00 +0200, Andreas Neumann wrote:
>
>> The hosts file has nothing to do with setting up networking.
>>
> It does if you're not using DNS on your LAN - how else is the system
> making a connection supposed to translate the hostname into an IP?

No.

> Also, the combination of the name on hostname and a matching line in
> hosts was the traditional way to tell a system what its IP is.

No. Where there is no configured network, there is no IP address, no matter
what your hosts file says.

> Another way is to edit /etc/network/interfaces: something like:

No. This is the only way to set up and configure networking (unless you are
dealing with sick concepts like systemd).

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