Re: Moving resolv.conf to /var

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Wed, 2011-08-03 at 10:29 +0200, Michał Górny wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> AFAIK NetworkManager is the most common tool which keeps writing
> to /etc/resolv.conf file during runtime. Such a solution makes it hard
> to support configurations where rootfs in read-only most of the time.
> 
> That's why I'm considering moving the resolv.conf file to /var. I'm not
> sure about the exact location there but /var seems much better for
> non-static resolver configs.
> 
> I think that the best solution would be to patch glibc so it will first
> try to load 'dynamic' resolv.conf from /var, and then fallback to
> static configs in /etc.
> 
> I'd really appreciate any kind of feedback on that idea.

Having resolv.conf in /etc also prevents read-only root, thus /var is
actually a better place for it since it's really a composite of various
information and can change at will.  Lennart wrote a blog post a month
or so ago about moving it somewhere, I forget where, but you might read
that post as well.  I'll take a patch that allows you to pass
--with-resolv-conf-file-path=<whatever> which shouldn't be too hard to
do.

I don't know how far you're likely to get with glibc though,
since /etc/resolv.conf is standardized in various places and it's a
long-standing tradition.  The best way to make changes here is simply to
try out patches in your distro and see how it works, and perhaps
eventually they'll see which way the wind is blowing.

Dan