Sometimes I hate change, and this is one. I just want to edit the /etc/resolv.conf. The search suffix in Ubuntu can be added by adding the following to the /etc/network/interfaces file:

dns-search domaintosearch

For example, on my Ubuntu client:

# cat /etc/network/interfaces
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
dns-search jim-zimmerman.com

I am not sure if the network needs to be restarted. I did restart it by:

# service networking restart