Comment 3 for bug 246322

After I filed this I realized there was no facility for updating dhclient.conf via dpkg scripting, so I also filed bug #246343 to have these fields added to the dhclient.conf "request" line by default. It won't hurt anything to have them requested there: if they're not available from the server then there's no problem; if they are available and the nis package is not installed (which it is not by default!) then no difference.

As for extra complications, I don't know that I agree. The NTP package, for example, doesn't require extra setup to "turn on" this feature. The scripts are added to the dhclient exit hooks on package install without any confirmation from the user. We don't ask them whether they'd like to allow their DNS servers to be overridden or not. Like NTP, NIS is not installed by default: the user must explicitly install it. I honestly can't think of any reason why someone would NOT want to use the nis-domain and nis-server settings that are provided to them from their DHCP server. The only time a DHCP server would be configured to provide that information, after all, was if the admin knew it was needed. NIS is NOT something you find in your everyday internet cafe etc.

I can see why this might be problematic based on the fact that it's potentially a change in behavior, but that's what Intrepid is for right? Many, many other behaviors are changed without warning on every release if Ubuntu. My opinion is that the default on package install should be to automatically accept DHCP settings, and if users want to disable this they can either (a) edit dhclient.conf and turn off the "request" entry, or (b) there can be some other facility via /etc/defaults or whatever that the NIS dhclient exit hooks look at to disable it. Note that the hook script would of course be written to preserve the existing /etc/yp.conf file (traditionally it would be renamed to /etc/yp.conf.dhcp) when obtaining a lease and put it back when releasing the lease, so we only override explicit user settings for the duration of the DHCP client connection, then they are put back.

I'll point out that the "enabled by default" behavior is how other distros do this.