Make enabling mdns in /etc/nsswitch.conf preseedable

[Etienne Goyer]

Binary package hint: libnss-mdns

libnss-mdns is a recommends of ubuntu-desktop, which mean it is installed by default in most case. His postinst script unconditionally edit /etc/nsswitch.conf and insert itself in the host entry.

Under certain circumstances, such as when installing a machine that is to reside in a network with a unicast .local DNS domain, it is not desirable to have mdns host name resolution. It would good if whether to edit /etc/nsswitch.conf would be preseedable, so that we can avoid the inconvenience of fixing the situation post-installation. A boolean debconf template such as libnss-mdns/edit_nsswitch, defaulting to true, with a low or medium priority, sounds like an elegant and low-touch way to solve this issue.

Either that, or automatically turning off the avahi daemon when on a network with a unicast .local domain (as describe in libnss-mdns README.Debian), would be good solution.

Thanks for your consideration.

[Fridtjof Busse (fbusse-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Any thoughts on this? I consider this a very important feature, since many large users use a .local domain and making this change preseedable would help considerably with the deployment.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Mark Thornton (mthornton-2)]

Note that Microsoft Small Business System 2011 (the current version) uses a .local domain by default (and almost invariably because choosing anything else is difficult). Changing the domain post install is even more difficult (it won't happen).