Re: Setting the hostname?

[Alexander Sack <asac jwsdot com>]

On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 05:23:17AM -0700, Howard Chu wrote:
> I just updated my build tree from svn and I see that NetworkManager now 
> tries to set the machine's hostname based on info various plugins may 
> provide. This caused quite a bit of confusion here on my Ubuntu laptop - 
> the hostname that was set by init during boot was used in the getty 
> prompt, but shortly after my X session started, it changed to 
> localhost.localdomain. X clients that were started after the hostname 
> changed no longer had permission to talk to the X server, and so silently 
> failed to launch, and a lot of cursing and swearing followed shortly 
> thereafter.

This feature is still missing in the ifupdown plugin which in the end
should be used for debian/ubuntu installs. keyfile from what i
understand cannot do it in a distro independent fashion.


>
> I realize there are a lot of different use cases being targeted here, but 
> I don't believe that overriding a non-NULL current hostname is a good 
> behavior. Maybe it's ok if the current hostname is "localhost" but there 
> aren't a lot of other situations where overriding would be the correct 
> action.

The idea for ifupdown plugin is to read /etc/hostname. Are there other
global configs we should respect?

>
> Along similar lines, it's not always correct to accept a domain name from 
> DHCP and stuff it into the local resolv.conf. I can see it in one use 
> case, e.g. in a large network of non-mobile machines, where you really do 
> want to just plug in the box and let it self-configure. But again, for a 
> laptop that's used in multiple locations, it's incorrect. My laptop is 
> part of my "symas.com" domain, no matter whose network I plug it into - 
> office, the wifi at the coffee shop, a friend's house, wherever.
>
> This is another reason why supporting dnsmasq over DBUS is superior to 
> using the resolvconf package - it leaves /etc/resolv.conf configured 
> exactly as I set it, so I get consistent name lookups no matter where I 
> am. It also obviates the need for most of the /etc/ppp/ip-{up,down} 
> scripts too, for the same reasons.

In general, I like the idea of using dnsmasq through DBUS. I can even
imagine that it could serve as a default setup for distros at some
point.

However, I think - please correct me if i am wrong - the problem as of
now is that NM wouldnt get any error from dnsmasq if its running, but
isnt actually used (e.g. no 127.0.0.1 in /etc/resolv.conf). Do you
think that dnsmasq through dbus could detect that and return an
error for such cases?


 - Alexander