Comment 13 for bug 8634

Message-Id: <1054978802.15847.274.camel@thanatos>
Date: 07 Jun 2003 11:40:04 +0200
From: Thomas Hood <email address hidden>
To: Tim Connors <email address hidden>
Cc: <email address hidden>, <email address hidden>
Subject: dhcp3-client stomping on resolv.conf

T.C.: I just saw your comment in #159529:
> I want my resolv.conf to have a predefined search path
> no matter what network I am on, and I want it to look at
> 127.0.0.1 as a nameserver. If instalation of dhcp{,3}-client
> is going to overwrite my settings, the least it can do is warn
> me at install time - I wasn't exactly expecting to lose my
> settings!

resolv.conf management is a problem in debian. The resolvconf
package is the proposed answer. Instead of editing /etc/resolv.conf
themselves, interface configuration programs will call /sbin/resolvconf
to update /etc/resolv.conf . /sbin/resolvconf can then make use of all
the information available to write a sensible /etc/resolv.conf. Support
is there for running named as a cacheing nameserver. See the README
file downloadable from:
    http://alioth.debian.org/projects/update-resolv/
for more information. You can also download a tarball from which
you can easily build a deb.

Right now I am adding hook scripts to resolvconf (for v. 0.8) so that
dhcp3-client will do the right thing when resolvconf is installed.
The "right thing" is to refrain from writing to resolv.conf directly
and to send the information to resolvconf instead. Resolvconf will
then write the /var/run/resolvconf/resolv.conf file based on all
the information it has available. The user can then symlink
/etc/resolv.conf to /var/run/resolvconf/resolv.conf . With resolvconf,
the user has ultimate control over /etc/resolv.conf because
1) he can change the symlink
2) he can customize /etc/init.d/resolvconf which is what creates
   /var/run/resolvconf/resolv.conf .

I would welcome any comments you might wish to make about resolvconf.
--
Thomas Hood