Comment 16 for bug 922578

Just read what Steve wrote in #13:
> - nothing should be writing to /etc at runtime;
> it's a bug that causes Ubuntu to not work out
> of the box with a read-only rootfs
> - even when not booting with a read-only rootfs,
> there is a race condition between mounting /
> rw and running dhclient, the latter being triggered
> as soon as a network device is found by udev.
> (This was worked around last cycle in dhclient,
> but it works by making the boot slower than
> it should be.)
> - there are half a dozen different packages in the
> archive that all have support for updating
> /etc/resolv.conf directly under various circumstances.
> This is unnecessary duplication of code, they probably
> all have different bugs, they certainly don't coordinate
> with one another, and they generally don't do
> the right thing in the case of multiple network devices.

What he said!

Resolvconf is really a very simple bit of script glue. After years of use in Debian it can be characterized as mature. The package still has some significant shortcomings but almost all of these are related to the fact that resolvconf is an optional package in Debian. E.g., it gets installed on a system with network interfaces already configured and won't have correct nameserver information until the next reboot. (Installing the package should trigger the "System needs restarting" indicator. I'll file a report about that.) E.g., because it's optional it has to guess what it should do with the old resolv.conf file on installation, and has to guess whether it's appropriate to restore this file on removal. It has to ask debconf questions which then have to be translated into all the world's natural languages. That kind of thing. If the package is part of the base system then these sorts of problems don't arise.

Other issues perhaps worth discussing are
* compatibility with chroots
* compatibility with nameserver-information suppliers not running as root --- they run /sbin/resolvconf as non-root and thus run resolvconf hook scripts as non-root... hmm...

If anyone sees problems in these areas then please open separate, specific bug reports, preferably including details of failure cases.
--
Thomas