keeps rewriting /etc/resolv.conf

[Michael Vogt]

Binary package hint: network-manager

Recently (I can not say when this started during the karmic cycle) network-manager started to rewrite my /etc/resolv.conf with a empty one. This is a regression, this used to work in jaunty. I have a static network config.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Sep 24 15:05:02 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 9.04 "Jaunty Jackalope" - Release amd64 (20090420.1)
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: network-manager (not installed)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-10.34-generic
SourcePackage: network-manager
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-10-generic x86_64

[Rick Spencer (rick-rickspencer3)]

Please comment wrt status of this issue. Please re-assign/un-assign as appropriate.

[Steve Beattie (sbeattie)]

I'm also seeing this; I have static interfaces defined in /etc/network/interfaces, but the network-manager daemon overwrites /etc/resolv.conf, despite it not configuring the interface. This started occurring before the great upstart-ification of the world, because I used to be ableto work around this issue by disabling /etc/init.d/network-manager. Alas, upstart has no way to disable permanently an init script, so the network-manager daemon always starts up when booting and breaks DNS resolution.

[mannheim (kronheim)]

This bug makes Ubuntu unusable out of the box on any machine that needs to have a static IP address. The only workaround I can find is to remove network-manager from the system entirely. Sorry to rant, and I know this isn't a user forum, but how can the importance of this bug not be "high"?

[Mekk (marcin-kasperski)]

I faced the same problem after upgrade to 9.10 - empty /etc/resolv.conf after reboot, ifdown eht0 && ifup eth0 resolves the issue.

I googled old bug 31057 which blames resolvconf package and in fact I noticed that I had this package installed. So I removed it and I am just to reboot to check whether it helps.

[Mekk (marcin-kasperski)]

Yes, it helped.

[Mekk (marcin-kasperski)]

(and just like the poster of the old bug I can assure that I never installed resolvconf by purpose, some dependency forced it in)

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

resolvconf integration is not really perfect. you can check if the latest dailies work from here as we landed some improvements that should prevent NM from breaking resolvconf on shutdown: https://edge.launchpad.net/~network-manager/+archive/trunk

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

if trunk doesnt fix it, when this happen, please post output of

 ls -l /etc/resolv.conf

and find -type f /etc/resolvconf

[tgr (theguru-999)]

I installed Kubuntu 9.10 and Ubuntu 9.10. Both had no internet connection. I had numerous errors like no repository sources, errors like 'Requested packages are already installed' when they were not present on the box and many other non-related faults. All were caused by lack of a DNS server connection. After a week of trying various things like disabling ipv6 and getting nowhere (although it did fix Firefox), I did an 'apt-get update' and instead of just failing it resolved to 10.0.0.0 (not my dns server or router). I read that this could be something to do with D-Link routers not supporting ipv6. That problem aside, after some more research I found that the 10.0.0.0 problem relates to the /etc/resolv.conf file being overwritten with some of the info from /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf. So to fix it....

su {then enter pass}
nano /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf

then edit the following line from....
#prepend domain-name-server 127xxx.xxx.xxx.1, xxx.xxx.xxx.2

to....
prepend domain-name-server 111.222.333.444

(where 111.222.333.444 is *your* DNS server)

then save the file and disconnect and reconnect your wlan0 and/or eth0 interface via the network connection icon on the notification bar/panel. When the interface is up the etc/resolv.conf file still gets overwritten and the incorrect nameserver 10.0.0.0 is still there but the correct DNS server is added _before_ it. Thus the internet (and apt-get etc) now works fine :-D

So you could say this problem is solved. It seems this problem is giving *ubuntu 9.10 a bad name. Let's hope the next version resolves this (pun intended ;-)

Regards,
Guru
http://guru.mameworld.info

[idistech (gary-idistech)]

Very similar symptoms...

when using a 3g card...worked great before ( 9.04 ), since upgrade, I seem to have a 1 in 4 chance of having a nameserver entry in /etc/resolv.conf...

so..
->machine suspended or re connecting after closing connection
->connect ...
-> successful connection ( Connection details all look good )
-> /etc/resolv.conf has one line ( "# Generated by NetworkManager" ), and no nameservers..

Less likely to do it from a cold boot/start
-> drop and reconnect the line will give an entry after 3/4 attempts

[Rick Spencer (rick-rickspencer3)]

Chris, could you please take a look if there is something we should be doing here?

[idistech (gary-idistech)]

Added Log from syslog, insertion of device through to failure..

Hope it helps

[idistech (gary-idistech)]

Patched up 9.10, 2.6.31-20-generic #57-Ubuntu SMP

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

Steve, Michael,

Are you still seeing this happening? I'm trying to figure out what is causing it... Do you have the 'resolvconf' package installed?

I'll start setting up a 9.10 VM to try and reproduce the issue.

[Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox)]

idistech,

Could you please confirm whether this is fine in Lucid or so? I think it's been largely covered and corrected with NM 0.8, just want to make sure.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

I'm closing the bug for now , please re open if you can reproduce it with latest version of Ubuntu. Thanks all.