Comment # 7 on bug 1131075 from Reinhard Max

I checked this again, and dnsmasq only needs the directory containing the
resolv file for a successful startup, so that it can put an inotify on it. The
resolv file itself does not need to exist and will be picked up by dnsmasq
through inotify as soon as it appears.

So, either /etc or /var/run/netconfig must be missing at the point in time when
dnsmasq fails to start. Unfortunately these two cases cannot be distinguished
from the error message and I cannot imagine for either of the two to not exist
at that point in time, given that dnsmasq orders itself After=network.target .