[Pkg-libvirt-maintainers] Bug#505522: improve integration with libvirtd - maybe via --conf-dir=/etc/dnsmasq.d?

[Guido Günther]

Package: dnsmasq
Version: 2.45-1
Severity: wishlist

Hi,
libvirtd uses dnsmasq to provide DNS and DHCP to virtual machines on
nated interfaces. It therefore calls dnsmasq for each virtual bridge
with something like like:

dnsmasq --keep-in-foreground --strict-order --bind-interfaces --pid-file  --conf-file  --listen-address 192.168.122.1 --except-interface lo --dhcp-leasefile=/var/lib/libvirt/dhcp-default.leases --dhcp-range 192.168.122.2,192.168.122.254 

In Debian's standard installation this fails with:

dnsmasq: failed to bind listening socket for 192.168.122.1: Address already in use

since dnsmasq binds the wildcard address. A possible solution is to
pass the options "interface=lo & bind-interfaces" to the "default"
dnsmasq process started via /etc/init.d/dnsmasq [1].

This could be fixed by passing "--conf-dif=/etc/dnsmasq.d/" per default
to dnsmasq. Libvirft could then put the necessary
interface,bind-interface options there (maybe prompting via debconf if
this should be done). Possibly other packages could make use of this
too. Does this sound reasonable?
 -- Guido

[1] See http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=504605