Comment 22 for bug 1109283

I would also like to add the following:

The non-recommend implementation of cobbler based maas-dhcp will always destroy user configuration because cobbler will always generate the file "/etc/dnsmasq.conf". When a does manual configuration for their dnsmasq service (regardless of whether they are using Cobbler MAAS DNS/DHCP), these changes will be lost because cobbler will always overwrite these file. (So if someone upgrades cobbler, these changes will be lost because cobbler will generate a new file)

This also means that cobbler does not run its own instance of dnsmasq, but it uses the default dnsmasq service, generating a file in "/etc/dnsmasq.conf" and consequently overwriting users changes. This is something that we see as bad implementation.

The SRU fixes this issue because it runs its own instance of DHCP/DNS, which doesn't change or affect any user configuration as MAAS manages its own files/instances of the service, and does not overwrite any manual configuration to services in /etc/.

Hope this helps