Problem Description:
Current Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.6 (and consequently, Red Hat CoreOS versions 4.19/4.20) ship with dnsmasq version 2.85. This version lacks critical DNS filtering features, specifically filter-A and filter-AAAA, which were introduced in dnsmasq 2.87.

Impact and Business Justification:
The absence of dnsmasq 2.87+ (and thus the filter-A/filter-AAAA capabilities) is a fundamental blocker for enabling a robust Disaster Recovery (DR) solution with StarLink, particularly for customers deploying Single Node OpenShift (SNO) clusters.

In a disaster scenario, a customer's SNO cluster's primary network connection typically operating over IPv6 needs to dynamically switch to a StarLink connection, which is primarily IPv4. To effectively manage this transition and control the IP family used for external communication from dual-stack pods within these customer SNO environments, the proposed solution relies on:

• Maintaining a dual-stack OpenShift cluster.
• Dynamically controlling the IP family preference for external outbound traffic by filtering A (IPv4) or AAAA (IPv6) responses at the dnsmasq instance running on the SNO node.

Without filter-A and filter-AAAA, dnsmasq cannot reliably perform this essential filtering, which would lead to:

• IPv6 preference issues (timeouts/delays) when external connectivity is IPv4-only.
• Application errors and degraded service during DR events for customer SNO deployments.
• Inability to deliver a robust and automated IP family failover mechanism for these customers.

Request:
We urgently request an upgrade of the dnsmasq package to version 2.86 or newer (preferably the latest stable version like 2.89+) in upcoming RHEL 9.x releases and, consequently, in future Red Hat CoreOS versions (starting from 4.19/4.20 or subsequent point releases) to support critical customer SNO-based disaster recovery solutions.

References:

• Existing RFE for context: https://issues.redhat.com/browse/RFE-7415
• Detailed solution proposal: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QngRursWQjjqyT7wfwiO_fwzzL7p_0Mml9EKfYawRELQo/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.om3rqbpt6w04