> So you just disabled the DHCP server "pfdhcplistener" service altogether?

Not completely disable, no.  If you do not specifically setup DHCP scopes PF 
will not serve up addresses. Without specific scope declarations PF will just 
listen to the DHCP traffic and not act, which is exactly what you want.

The idea is that if you add PF as an IP-helper (in cisco speak) and dont do 
anything on the PF side then it all just works.

> The reasons I run DHCP on the switch...

That makes sense and if your network is not very large then the management is 
pretty simple.  If your network grows however, how does one manage such a setup 
with 20 switches, or 100 or more?

We run dedicated DHCP servers which is a nice single point of management and if 
you configure it correctly its not a single point of failure.

However, this is all just my curiosity.  What is the most important is does it 
make sense to you, since you are the guy in charge of working on it if/when it 
crashes. If you have it under control, then that is what is really important.

Jake Sallee
Godfather of Bandwidth
System Engineer
University of Mary Hardin-Baylor
WWW.UMHB.EDU

900 College St.
Belton, Texas
76513

Fone: 254-295-4658
Phax: 254-295-4221
________________________________
From: Boris Epstein [[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2015 3:06 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [PacketFence-users] PF and independent DHCP

Jake,

Thank you very much for your input, highly valuable as always.

So you just disabled the DHCP server "pfdhcplistener" service altogether?

The reasons I run DHCP on the switch is that the switch does it - and why not? 
The logic here is as follows - if my switch is down then the devices it serves 
are naturally going down too. However, the PF server is a different device. If 
it goes down there is no need for it to take down the DHCP capability for 
devices already plugged into this switch and assigned their proper VLAN. Does 
that make sense?

Respectfully,

Boris.

On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 3:56 PM, Sallee, Jake 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
You can put the DHCP helper directive in the switch just don't run DHCP on the 
PF server (this is exaclty what we do).

The switch should still serve up your DHCP and the PF server will be happy that 
it is seeing the DHCP traffic.

Also; running DHCP on the actual switch has always struck me as a strange idea. 
Could you explain why you decided to do it that way?

Jake Sallee
Godfather of Bandwidth
System Engineer
University of Mary Hardin-Baylor
WWW.UMHB.EDU<http://WWW.UMHB.EDU>

900 College St.
Belton, Texas
76513

Fone: 254-295-4658<tel:254-295-4658>
Phax: 254-295-4221<tel:254-295-4221>
________________________________
From: Boris Epstein [[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>]
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2015 9:38 AM
To: 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: [PacketFence-users] PF and independent DHCP

Hello listmates,

I am using PF in a VLAN-based environment. The VLAN's aremanaged by independent 
switches, So is DHCP assignment on these VLAN's.

It all works fine with one exception: the captive portal for machines on my 
VLAN's generates the following error message when I try to connect to it:

"Sorry!

Your computer was not found in the PacketFence database. Please reboot to solve 
this issue."

This discussion from a few years back:

http://sourceforge.net/p/packetfence/mailman/packetfence-users/thread/[email protected]/

seems to suggest that the DHCP info (MAC, IP address, etc.) needs to be 
communicated back to the PF server. One suggested approach is using ip-helpers. 
My concern is that this may make me dependent on my PF server for DHCP as my 
Cisco switches will be tied to it and unable to perform as independent DHCP 
servers. Does anybody know if that is the case?

In short, I need to have a situation where routine IP infrastructure functions 
(routing, DHCP IP address assignment, etc.) occur regardless of the status of 
the PF server - even if it is down. Any advice on how to do that and at the 
same time have a functional PF server with accessible captive portal will be 
greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

Boris.

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