Reasons for using openresolv
Why openresolv over the Debian implementation? Here's some reasons
- Works with POSIX shell and userland
- Does not need awk, grep or sed which means we can work without /usr mounted
- Works with other init systems than Debians' out of the box
- Available as a 2 clause BSD license
- Prefer configs via IF_METRIC for dynamic ordering
- Configures zones for local resolvers other than libc
The last point is quite important, especially when running VPN systems. Take the following resolv.conf files which have been generated by a DHCP client and sent to resolvconf:
# resolv.conf from bge0 search foo.com nameserver 1.2.3.4 # resolv.conf from tap0 domain bar.org nameserver 5.6.7.8
In this instance, queries for foo.com will go to 1.2.3.4 and queries for bar.org will go to 5.6.7.8. This does require the resolvers to be configured to pickup the resolvconf generated configuration for them though. openresolv ships with helpers for dnsmasq, ISC BIND, PowerDNS Recursor and unbound
