[Voyage-linux] question/comment about resolvconf package in 0.6.5 and 0.7

[Arun Khan]

I got interested in Voyage Linux after getting an ALIX and a Soekris
boards and reading about VL in respective forums/mailing lists.

My congrats and heartfelt thanks to Punky and other contributors for
putting together this minimalist distro - great job indeed.

I am not new to Linux install and configuration.  However, embedded
Linux is new to me so please bear with my questions while I try to
understand how this distro works.

I have done a stalk install of v0.6.5 as well as v0.7 (daily build
22/Sep/10)  from the tar balls following the instructions in the
README file.

The first issue I ran into was hostname resolution; ping
www.google.com fails because www.google.com name resolutions fails.

Poking around the system found /etc/resolv.conf is a link file

/etc/resolv.conf -> /etc/resolvconf/run/resolv.conf

which shows only one nameserver 127.0.0.1

Upon searching found the solution; need the following line in the
stanza for the interface that connects to the 'Net.  In my case eth0
as shown below:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
        address 192.168.1.3
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        broadcast 192.168.1.255
        gateway 192.168.1.1
        dns-nameservers 4.2.2.4 8.8.8.8   <-- this line

With the above line the program "resolvconf" creates a file
/lib/init/rw/resolvconf/interfaces/eth0.inet which contains the
nameservers listed above but
/etc/resolvconf/run/resolv.conf still contains only one line 127.0.0.1
as the nameserver.

Given that dnsmasq needs at least one "forwarder" DNS servers on the
'Net and by default it references /etc/resolv.conf, the setup between
"resolvconf" and "dnsmasq" appears to be circular.

Any yet, dnsmasq is able to resolve hostnames once I add the
"dns-nameservers" line in /etc/network/interfaces.

I have read a couple of Debian help sites on resolvconf and dnsmasq
but not found any that ties up the two.

I would appreciate if some can point me any reference how the setup
between "resolvconf" and "dnsmasq" work on Voyage Linux.

As for the Voyage  Linux install README, I would also suggest to add
instructions to add dns-nameservers in the Network Setup section.

TIA,
-- Arun Khan