Nicolas Williams writes: > > However, we could change this. Shutting down dhcpagent could simply > > return administrative control (and responsibility) to the system > > administrator. This means that (by default) we'd remove the > > IFF_DHCPRUNNING flag, but leave everything else in place. > > But then what would ever release the lease? Nothing, I guess.
The same thing that releases the lease if you just turn the system off: time. > And if the lease was about to expire they that could be a problem, no? If the lease was about to expire, and you shut down the client and just left the address configured on the interface, then you'd be in violation of the protocol, and could cause a conflict for the next user of the address. However, that case is essentially identical to the one where someone never ran DHCP at all, and just manually configured an address on the interface. If the DHCP server later tried to lease that address out, it (or its client) would run into the same conflict. That's what I mean about having the flag indicate "responsibility." With the IFF_DHCPRUNNING flag set, the interface address configuration is the responsibility of the daemon, with it unset, it's the user's responsibility, and the only thing the daemon needs to do is make sure that the state is correct at the point it clears that flag. > If you'll consider this approach then you might as well consider a > configuration option to make dhcpagent set the lease expiration time to > now + N minutes (even if the server doesn't support that; there's > nothing wrong with trying). That doesn't sound like a configuration option to me, because 'now' is always moving. That sounds like a command, and we do have a command similar to that -- "ifconfig <intf> dhcp extend" will cause the DHCP client to contact the server and try to get a renewed lease. If you're in that state, and you're worried about it, you can do that. I'm not sure that dropping the interface should be a case where we attempt to extend automatically, though. -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sun Microsystems / 35 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 _______________________________________________ networking-discuss mailing list [email protected]
