2008/532 NWAM Phase 1 - plocher followup from inception review

[Nicolas Williams]

On Fri, Oct 31, 2008 at 02:49:15PM -0400, James Carlson wrote:
> John Plocher writes:
> > How about editing /etc/resolv.conf (I'd hope not)
> 
> Probably not, but that's not this project.  That's NWAM Phase 2.  It'd
> be much harder to review this project if we had to invent all of the
> subtle components needed for a future project at the same time.  As it
> stands, NWAM Phase 1 is very late.

Originally we had a project to create name service configuration
profiles that could be switched around, and the idea was that NWAM
profiles would name a name service configuration profile, with NWAM
switch name service profiles when the networking location changes.  That
was project "Duckwater," and it would have been responsible for
delivering the mechanism for specifying multiple DNS resolver
configurations (amongst other things) and switching them around.  That
project is on hold for the forseeable future.

I don't know what NWAM will be doing in the meantime about name service
configuration.

> My guess is that one of two things eventually happens to
> /etc/resolv.conf when Phase 2 arrives:
> 
>   - The file is treated as part of the current location.  When we
>     change locations, the current contents of the file are put into
>     the repository, and the soon-to-be-current one from the repository
>     is put in place.

That would be good.

>   - The file is ignored completely.  It's no longer an administrative
>     interface, and some other interface (perhaps not even from NWAM!)
>     has subsumed its role.  This is the sort of Major release change
>     that Glenn was talking about.

That would be good too provided that NWAM was aware of it and knew how
to change the DNS resolver configuration.

My suggestion would be to wait for Enhanced SMF Profiles and then create
a very simple minded service which on start/refresh installs a name
service configuration specified by the service's properties, and then
let NWAM apply Enhanced SMF Profiles when it switches locations.

Nico
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