Re: Moving resolv.conf to /var

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Thu, 2011-08-04 at 17:47 +0200, Marcel Holtmann wrote:
> Hi Dan,
> 
> > > 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.
> 
> and that is why just pointing it to 127.0.0.1 and running a local DNS
> proxy is the best choice ;)

Which I'm a big fan of too, and NM has done for about a year with the
dnsmasq local caching nameserver plugin (man NetworkManager.conf).  Most
setups should probably run a local caching DNS server all the time.

Dan