Late to the party - multiple search domains on the network.

[Simon Kelley <simon thekelleys org uk>]

I just found NetworkManager this weekend whilst researching how to solve 
the problems that NetworkManager solves. It looks good and I plan to 
work with it.


I came across 
http://mail.gnome.org/archives/networkmanager-list/2005-February/msg00122.html 
in the archive: quote

>When the "domainName" DHCP option contains spaces, nm-named-manager
>proclaims it as invalid, although multiple domain names are often used
>in the DHCP server configuration. The attached patch fixes this
>behavior.

It's worth knowing that putting multiple space separated domain names in 
DHCP option 15 is _not_ the correct way to do this.  I know that people 
do it (because the ISC code _still_ doesn't support the correct way, 
AFAIK) but it will break much of the time. (Even if you fix it on Linux, 
the Windows and Mac boxen on your network will choke.)

The correct way is to use DHCP option 119, as defined in RFC 3397. The 
data format is not a simple counted string, but a variant on the format 
used in DNS packets, complete with common substring elimination. I guess 
those IETF people where worried about the size of their packets.

The Debian package for dhcpcd includes a patch to support option 119. I 
submitted the patch upstream, but the mail bounced repeatedly - looks 
like the dhcpcd maintainer is MIA. I'm happy to try an work out a patch 
for the NM-included dhcpcd too, if that would help.

If you need DHCP server support for option 119 and the latest ISC still 
doesn't have it, try dnsmasq: the integrated DHCP server has RFC 3397 
support from about version 2.19.

Cheers,

Simon.








which seems to have missed the fact that putting