Network Manager Strikes Again!!!!

[Paul Howarth]

David Jansen wrote:
> And the problem is even worse as I discovered on a machine that is
> supposed to be a DNS server for a domain I manage: the NetworkManager
> update pulled in caching-nameserver, and this overwrote
> /var/named/chroot/etc/named.conf with one that only does caching and
> localhost stuff.

$ rpm -qip NetworkManager-0.3.3-1.cvs20050112.1.fc3.i386.rpm
(snip)
NetworkManager attempts to keep an active network connection available 
at all times.  It is intended only for the desktop use-case, and is not 
intended for usage on servers.
(snip)

I trust you were able to recover the overwritten files from your 
server's backups?

> Packaging bug I think; such a server configuration file should not get
> overwritten, caching-nameserver should have installed its own file as
> named.conf.rpmnew or so.

I'd agree with that.

> Or maybe even a better suggestion: if NetworkManager needs to have a
> local nameserver, why not have it require either caching-nameserver or
> bind if bind is already installed?

RPM's dependency system, unlike that of debian, does not provide an easy 
way of specifying alternative dependencies like this. It *could* be done 
using "virtual dependencies" but since really the requirement for 
caching-nameserver is a hack to work around a bug elsewhere, I would 
hope that it goes away in the not too distant future.

Paul.