On Fri, Aug 04, 2017 at 09:01:32AM +0100, Joe wrote: > On Fri, 4 Aug 2017 10:59:13 +1000 > Zenaan Harkness <[email protected]> wrote: > > Given the uniqueness of how you seem to want to do your networking, > > perhaps that's the best option to make it less abnormal - looks like > > it to me. > > I don't think it's really all that unique, or unreasonable, for a > computer user to want to specify a particular DNS server. If an
That is absolutely true, and does not discount at all my implication that "copying my own file over the top of /etc/resolv.conf after dhclient runs and hoping there's no other race conditions that catch me out", is perhaps a little "abnormal" in terms of a networking setup. > operating system file needs to be made immutable in order to achieve > this, some programmer somewhere has... made a mistake, to put it kindly. Or the user is not achieving their outcome due to not using the installed software in the way it was designed. > I wasted twenty minutes the other day, because a functional network > switch connected to a couple of PCs had lost its wired connection to > the rest of the network, which had been OK half an hour earlier. This > simple fault was concealed by the way my Windows laptop was behaving in > the absence of a DHCP server. Despite my efforts, it was ignoring its > previous DHCP address, and my manually entered address, and was > acquiring an APIPA address, thus guaranteeing no possible network > connection ever. :D - my condolences for your achievement in "using" some feature of some version of Windows I had never even heard of before :D > Eventually I worked out that there was a bug causing even worse > misbehaviour than usual, and forced a suitable IP address onto the > machine, when I quickly discovered a lack of connectivity... but if the > damn thing hadn't been so *helpful*, I'd have fixed it much quicker. > There appears to be no way to tell a Windows computer that you never, > ever, *ever* want to see an APIPA address anywhere. > > Yes, there's the perpetual argument about how much hand-holding a > non-IT person needs, and it's a lot, and how much should be left to the > user, but whatever the decision, it should always be possible for a > user to insist 'I want it done *this* way'. If that lands him in > trouble, tough, but foot-shooting must *always* be allowed, without an > enormous struggle. Indeed, there are many ways to sking this cat - network manager, chattr, cp -o "with-crossed fingers" my-resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf, manual commands added in /e/n/i, /etc/resolvconf/resolv.conf.d/ - even the Windows IT guys from the other department of the OP might be able to update their DHCPd settings to deliver the desired DNS server, when the MAC addresses get configured - do 2 things at the same time. Really, it would be easy to argue there are too many ways to skin this cat. Good luck all,
