On Mon, Jan 04, 2010 at 12:51:25PM -0800, eclectic 923 wrote: > > > --- On Mon, 1/4/10, Andrew Pollock <apoll...@debian.org> wrote: > > > > What is supposed to happen when the DHCP administrator > > wants to roll out a > > change to the default route? > > > > I think at best I could add what you're asking for only in > > the case of > > initial lease acquisition and not renewal. Even then, I > > suspect this is > > going to surprise people who expect or rely on the current > > behaviour. > > > > I think for your particular case, it might be best to use a > > custom DHCP > > client hook, which goes and explicitly removes the default > > route provided by > > DHCP. > > I didn't notice any code in the script in question to remove the prior > default route, before adding a new one. Based on what I've seen, the existing > code would actually create a bug if the admin changed the route, because > there would be two different default routes in the routing table. Perhaps the > kernel keeps it straight when the same network device is set as a default > route. I'd suggest that creating two different default routes isn't a good > thing, or a feature one would want to preserve. > > Is there any case where one would want two default routes? It seems a > rather odd/confusing feature. If a system has two interfaces both using > DHCP, both could end up setting default routes, which is exactly what > happens on my systems with the current script (I get two default routes). > > Assuming you know more than I do (since I recognize your name from 10+ > years of using Linux) - at the very least, the debian /etc/default > directory should have a switch to control the behavior of creating a > default route (with the switch defaulted to the existing behavior). I > think what I'm doing is very logical and desirable, as I previously > explained. It should qualify as an excellent (yet very simple) improvement > to debian, which would simply mean changing the priority of this bug. > > If you wouldn't mind, could you explain why one would want two default > routes in the kernel? If the kernel failed over gracefully (oops, didn't > get an ack to the packet or opening the connection, try the other default > route...) I wouldn't even have noticed this problem. >
Sorry if I wasn't clear, I've got a lot going on at the moment. I'm not advocating multiple default routes (you'd only ever want to do that for some sort of oddball load balancing). I'm just saying I don't want to remove the DHCP administrator's ability to centrally *change* the default route for all DHCP clients. I'm not sure if that functionality exists as things current stand, but I certainly wouldn't want to remove that functionality if it's there by implementing what you're asking for. I'm not going to be able to take any action on this bug in the next month (at least). -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
