Re: dnsmasq

[Howard Chu <hyc symas com>]

Jim Popovitch wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 02:59, Howard Chu<hyc symas com>  wrote:
> > Hm. So what exactly did you mean by saying "the user needs some level of
> > control over which connections are allowed to update resolv.conf" ?
>
> Certainly not control of packet routing.  All I meant by that
> statement, and it's hard for me to imagine you can see it any other
> way, is that NM users need a level of control over which connections
> touch resolv.conf.   If you recall, prior to that single statement you
> quoted, I had suggested three options (global, connection, connection
> type).   None of that implies anything close to the left field you
> have drug this thread into.

> > Yes, it's a good idea to have control over how nameserver info received from
> > various interfaces gets used by the local machine. But trying to slot any of
> > those controls into /etc/resolv.conf is futile.
>
> <sigh>   You really don't understand the issue myself and others have
> pressed for.

No. It seems I understand it better than you.

The point is that users need a level of control over how name resolution is 
done. Once you resort to adding/removing entries from resolv.conf you've 
completely removed the possibility of retaining local control over name 
resolution. If you leave /etc/resolv.conf pointed at your local caching name 
server, you retain full control. You can make local policy decisions about how 
to handle any particular name lookup, instead of just blindly walking down a 
list of 3 server addresses in a flat file for all lookups.

Obviously I agree that you should be able to decide which connections' 
nameserver info is allowed to be used. But implementing that control by 
deciding whether they can or cannot update resolv.conf is the wrong way to do 
it. Now if you were to decouple "allow connection's info to be used" from 
"update resolv.conf" and allow for other actions to be taken instead, then 
you'd have something.
--
  -- Howard Chu
  CTO, Symas Corp.           http://www.symas.com
  Director, Highland Sun     http://highlandsun.com/hyc/
  Chief Architect, OpenLDAP  http://www.openldap.org/project/