Re: Multiple VPNs and resolvconf

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Sun, 2009-08-09 at 22:10 +0200, Dominik George wrote:
> Hi list,
> 
> are there plans for NetworkManager to support multiple VPNs
> simultaneously? The applet currently only allows one VPN connection at a
> time, I don't know if NM internally supports more.

It's been on the feature list for a while and should get implemented
eventually.

> Furthermore, NetworkManager really should honour manual entries in
> /etc/resolv.conf so VPN management is posible with other software (NM
> will override entries made by OpenVPN, etc. every now and then).

Not really possible, because /etc/resolv.conf is simply not a canonical
source.  It's constructed (even when you're not using NM) from multiple
sources of information; DHCP, PPP, VPNs, etc.  The traditional method
has been for every one of those services to copy resolv.conf to a backup
file, replace it with the new information, and when the service goes
away, some script copies the backup file back.  resolvconf sort of helps
this, but it still doesn't handle the case when one of those services
fails to notify resolvconf that it's gone away.

The point is that any custom entries need to be kept along with the
actual configuration for that interface, so that when more than one
thing wants to touch DNS information, the broker (NM) can handle it.
Some distros use resolvconf underneath NM, but that doesn't really fix
the problems that using resolvconf alone still has.

Note that there is an openvpn plugin for NM that will probably work for
you and handle this situation just fine.

Dan