On Fri, 4 Aug 2017 10:59:13 +1000 Zenaan Harkness <zen...@freedbms.net> wrote:
> > Given the uniqueness of how you seem to want to do your networking, > perhaps that's the best option to make it less abnormal - looks like > it to me. > I don't think it's really all that unique, or unreasonable, for a computer user to want to specify a particular DNS server. If an operating system file needs to be made immutable in order to achieve this, some programmer somewhere has... made a mistake, to put it kindly. I wasted twenty minutes the other day, because a functional network switch connected to a couple of PCs had lost its wired connection to the rest of the network, which had been OK half an hour earlier. This simple fault was concealed by the way my Windows laptop was behaving in the absence of a DHCP server. Despite my efforts, it was ignoring its previous DHCP address, and my manually entered address, and was acquiring an APIPA address, thus guaranteeing no possible network connection ever. Eventually I worked out that there was a bug causing even worse misbehaviour than usual, and forced a suitable IP address onto the machine, when I quickly discovered a lack of connectivity... but if the damn thing hadn't been so *helpful*, I'd have fixed it much quicker. There appears to be no way to tell a Windows computer that you never, ever, *ever* want to see an APIPA address anywhere. Yes, there's the perpetual argument about how much hand-holding a non-IT person needs, and it's a lot, and how much should be left to the user, but whatever the decision, it should always be possible for a user to insist 'I want it done *this* way'. If that lands him in trouble, tough, but foot-shooting must *always* be allowed, without an enormous struggle. -- Joe