DNS broken because of incorrect boot order (/etc/init.d/pppd-dns)

[Stefan Daniel Schwarz (Wolfram Ravenwolf)]

The boot order has changed from Breezy to Dapper, now /etc/init.d/pppd-dns is linked to /etc/rcS.d/S55pppd-dns instead of /etc/rcS.d/S38pppd-dns as it used to be. Since it runs after networking is brought up (which, thanks to pppoeconf, already has activated the ppp connection), it discards the (until then valid) /etc/resolv.conf. We end up with an established ppp connection but without DNS servers to resolve domain names.

The work-around would be to disconnect (sudo poff) and reconnect (pon), but a real fix is changing the boot order back to how it was set up under Breezy. I'm pretty sure a lot of people don't even notice that the ppp connection is up and that the DNS is being mangled, instead they will assume that there's no Internet connection after boot-up, despite having configured it that way. In addition to that, bringing up a working Internet connection on boot up is vital for headless servers, so I consider this bug of high importance.

Here's how I fixed it:

sudo mv /etc/rcS.d/S55pppd-dns /etc/rcS.d/S38pppd-dns

By the way, /etc/rcS.d/S39dns-clean (Breezy) changed into /etc/rcS.d/S55dns-clean (Dapper) as well, although its comments clearly indicate "It should never be run while ppp is up." - which happens at S40networking! Somehow the boot order got mixed up quite a bit, causing hard to troubleshoot problems...

Thanks for fixing this problem,
-- Stefan D. Schwarz