Bug#486747: pbuilder-uml should not always copy in /etc/resolv.conf, hostname, hosts.

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

Package: pbuilder-uml
Version: 0.181
Severity: normal

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Currently, in /usr/lib/pbuilder/pbuilder-modules, the function
copy_local_configuration() transfers /etc/resolv.conf (among other
files) from the host system to the pbuilder.

This is triggered during pbuilder-user-mode-linux, even though it
doesn't necessarily make sense to do so.

The scenario i ran into this with was on a host with a local caching
resolver running on the loopback interface.  On the host,
/etc/resolv.conf points to 127.0.0.1.  But on the UML instance, there
is no caching resolver, so DNS resolution fails.

Similarly, i see no reason to transfer in /etc/hosts or /etc/hostname
for the UML instance: there are good reasons why a user maintaining a
UML instance might prefer to keep these files distinct within their
virtualized host.

I'm not sure the right way to resolve the problem, but here are some
ideas:

 * an environment variable which says where to fetch the "local
   configuration" from (so users could redirect away from the host's
   /etc/)?

 * a command-line flag that could direct pbuilder to not
   copy_local_configuration() at all?

Or maybe there's some other option that handles this already which
i've missed in my reading of the documentation and the source.  If
there is, i'd be happy to learn about it!

Thanks for pbuilder, and for supporting the uml flavor of it as well.
It's an incredibly useful tool.

Regards,

	--dkg

- -- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (200, 'unstable'), (101, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.24-1-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages pbuilder-uml depends on:
ii  pbuilder                    0.181        personal package builder for Debia
ii  rootstrap                   0.3.24-4     A tool for building complete Linux
ii  user-mode-linux             2.6.24-1um-1 User-mode Linux (kernel)

pbuilder-uml recommends no packages.

- -- no debconf information

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