3 .\" Copyright (c) 2004 by Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. ("ISC")
4 .\" Copyright (c) 1996-2003 by Internet Software Consortium
6 .\" Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
7 .\" purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
8 .\" copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.
10 .\" THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND ISC DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
11 .\" WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
12 .\" MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL ISC BE LIABLE FOR
13 .\" ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
14 .\" WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
15 .\" ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT
16 .\" OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
18 .\" Internet Systems Consortium, Inc.
19 .\" 950 Charter Street
20 .\" Redwood City, CA 94063
22 .\" http://www.isc.org/
24 .\" This software has been written for Internet Systems Consortium
25 .\" by Ted Lemon in cooperation with Vixie Enterprises and Nominum, Inc.
26 .\" To learn more about Internet Systems Consortium, see
27 .\" ``http://www.isc.org/''. To learn more about Vixie Enterprises,
28 .\" see ``http://www.vix.com''. To learn more about Nominum, Inc., see
29 .\" ``http://www.nominum.com''.
31 .\" $Id: dhcpd.8,v 1.1.1.1 2005/12/07 10:50:34 sonic_amiga Exp $
35 dhcpd - Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol Server
70 .I trace-playback-file
79 The Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Server, dhcpd, implements the
80 Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and the Internet Bootstrap
81 Protocol (BOOTP). DHCP allows hosts on a TCP/IP network to request
82 and be assigned IP addresses, and also to discover information about
83 the network to which they are attached. BOOTP provides similar
84 functionality, with certain restrictions.
87 This software is free software. At various times its development has
88 been underwritten by various organizations, including the ISC and
89 Vixie Enterprises. The development of 3.0 has been funded almost
90 entirely by Nominum, Inc.
92 At this point development is being shepherded by Ted Lemon, and hosted
93 by the ISC, but the future of this project depends on you. If you
94 have features you want, please consider implementing them.
97 The DHCP protocol allows a host which is unknown to the network
98 administrator to be automatically assigned a new IP address out of a
99 pool of IP addresses for its network. In order for this to work, the
100 network administrator allocates address pools in each subnet and
101 enters them into the dhcpd.conf(5) file.
103 On startup, dhcpd reads the
105 file and stores a list of available addresses on each subnet in
106 memory. When a client requests an address using the DHCP protocol,
107 dhcpd allocates an address for it. Each client is assigned a lease,
108 which expires after an amount of time chosen by the administrator (by
109 default, one day). Before leases expire, the clients to which leases
110 are assigned are expected to renew them in order to continue to use
111 the addresses. Once a lease has expired, the client to which that
112 lease was assigned is no longer permitted to use the leased IP
115 In order to keep track of leases across system reboots and server
116 restarts, dhcpd keeps a list of leases it has assigned in the
117 dhcpd.leases(5) file. Before dhcpd grants a lease to a host, it
118 records the lease in this file and makes sure that the contents of the
119 file are flushed to disk. This ensures that even in the event of a
120 system crash, dhcpd will not forget about a lease that it has
121 assigned. On startup, after reading the dhcpd.conf file, dhcpd
122 reads the dhcpd.leases file to refresh its memory about what leases
125 New leases are appended to the end of the dhcpd.leases
126 file. In order to prevent the file from becoming arbitrarily large,
127 from time to time dhcpd creates a new dhcpd.leases file from its
128 in-core lease database. Once this file has been written to disk, the
131 and the new file is renamed dhcpd.leases. If the system crashes in
132 the middle of this process, whichever dhcpd.leases file remains will
133 contain all the lease information, so there is no need for a special
134 crash recovery process.
136 BOOTP support is also provided by this server. Unlike DHCP, the BOOTP
137 protocol does not provide a protocol for recovering
138 dynamically-assigned addresses once they are no longer needed. It is
139 still possible to dynamically assign addresses to BOOTP clients, but
140 some administrative process for reclaiming addresses is required. By
141 default, leases are granted to BOOTP clients in perpetuity, although
142 the network administrator may set an earlier cutoff date or a shorter
143 lease length for BOOTP leases if that makes sense.
145 BOOTP clients may also be served in the old standard way, which is to
146 simply provide a declaration in the dhcpd.conf file for each
147 BOOTP client, permanently assigning an address to each client.
149 Whenever changes are made to the dhcpd.conf file, dhcpd must be
150 restarted. To restart dhcpd, send a SIGTERM (signal 15) to the
151 process ID contained in
152 .IR RUNDIR/dhcpd.pid ,
153 and then re-invoke dhcpd. Because the DHCP server database is not as
154 lightweight as a BOOTP database, dhcpd does not automatically restart
155 itself when it sees a change to the dhcpd.conf file.
157 Note: We get a lot of complaints about this. We realize that it would
158 be nice if one could send a SIGHUP to the server and have it reload
159 the database. This is not technically impossible, but it would
160 require a great deal of work, our resources are extremely limited, and
161 they can be better spent elsewhere. So please don't complain about
162 this on the mailing list unless you're prepared to fund a project to
163 implement this feature, or prepared to do it yourself.
166 The names of the network interfaces on which dhcpd should listen for
167 broadcasts may be specified on the command line. This should be done
168 on systems where dhcpd is unable to identify non-broadcast interfaces,
169 but should not be required on other systems. If no interface names
170 are specified on the command line dhcpd will identify all network
171 interfaces which are up, eliminating non-broadcast interfaces if
172 possible, and listen for DHCP broadcasts on each interface.
174 If dhcpd should listen on a port other than the standard (port 67),
177 flag may used. It should be followed by the udp port number on which
178 dhcpd should listen. This is mostly useful for debugging purposes.
180 To run dhcpd as a foreground process, rather than allowing it to run
181 as a daemon in the background, the
183 flag should be specified. This is useful when running dhcpd under a
184 debugger, or when running it out of inittab on System V systems.
186 To have dhcpd log to the standard error descriptor, specify the
188 flag. This can be useful for debugging, and also at sites where a
189 complete log of all dhcp activity must be kept but syslogd is not
190 reliable or otherwise cannot be used. Normally, dhcpd will log all
191 output using the syslog(3) function with the log facility set to
194 Dhcpd can be made to use an alternate configuration file with the
196 flag, or an alternate lease file with the
198 flag. Because of the importance of using the same lease database at
199 all times when running dhcpd in production, these options should be
200 used \fBonly\fR for testing lease files or database files in a
201 non-production environment.
203 When starting dhcpd up from a system startup script (e.g., /etc/rc),
204 it may not be desirable to print out the entire copyright message on
205 startup. To avoid printing this message, the
207 flag may be specified.
209 The DHCP server reads two files on startup: a configuration file, and
210 a lease database. If the
212 flag is specified, the server will simply test the configuration file
213 for correct syntax, but will not attempt to perform any network
214 operations. This can be used to test the a new configuration file
215 automatically before installing it.
219 flag can be used to test the lease database file in a similar way.
221 The \fB-tf\fR and \fB-play\fR options allow you to specify a file into
222 which the entire startup state of the server and all the transactions
223 it processes are either logged or played back from. This can be
224 useful in submitting bug reports - if you are getting a core dump
225 every so often, you can start the server with the \fB-tf\fR option and
226 then, when the server dumps core, the trace file will contain all the
227 transactions that led up to it dumping core, so that the problem can
228 be easily debugged with \fB-play\fR.
230 The \fB-play\fR option must be specified with an alternate lease file,
231 using the \fB-lf\fR switch, so that the DHCP server doesn't wipe out
232 your existing lease file with its test data. The DHCP server will
233 refuse to operate in playback mode unless you specify an alternate
236 The syntax of the dhcpd.conf(5) file is discussed separately. This
237 section should be used as an overview of the configuration process,
238 and the dhcpd.conf(5) documentation should be consulted for detailed
239 reference information.
242 dhcpd needs to know the subnet numbers and netmasks of all subnets for
243 which it will be providing service. In addition, in order to
244 dynamically allocate addresses, it must be assigned one or more ranges
245 of addresses on each subnet which it can in turn assign to client
246 hosts as they boot. Thus, a very simple configuration providing DHCP
247 support might look like this:
250 subnet 239.252.197.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
251 range 239.252.197.10 239.252.197.250;
255 Multiple address ranges may be specified like this:
258 subnet 239.252.197.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
259 range 239.252.197.10 239.252.197.107;
260 range 239.252.197.113 239.252.197.250;
264 If a subnet will only be provided with BOOTP service and no dynamic
265 address assignment, the range clause can be left out entirely, but the
266 subnet statement must appear.
269 DHCP leases can be assigned almost any length from zero seconds to
270 infinity. What lease length makes sense for any given subnet, or for
271 any given installation, will vary depending on the kinds of hosts
274 For example, in an office environment where systems are added from
275 time to time and removed from time to time, but move relatively
276 infrequently, it might make sense to allow lease times of a month of
277 more. In a final test environment on a manufacturing floor, it may
278 make more sense to assign a maximum lease length of 30 minutes -
279 enough time to go through a simple test procedure on a network
280 appliance before packaging it up for delivery.
282 It is possible to specify two lease lengths: the default length that
283 will be assigned if a client doesn't ask for any particular lease
284 length, and a maximum lease length. These are specified as clauses
285 to the subnet command:
288 subnet 239.252.197.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
289 range 239.252.197.10 239.252.197.107;
290 default-lease-time 600;
295 This particular subnet declaration specifies a default lease time of
296 600 seconds (ten minutes), and a maximum lease time of 7200 seconds
297 (two hours). Other common values would be 86400 (one day), 604800
298 (one week) and 2592000 (30 days).
300 Each subnet need not have the same lease\(emin the case of an office
301 environment and a manufacturing environment served by the same DHCP
302 server, it might make sense to have widely disparate values for
303 default and maximum lease times on each subnet.
305 Each BOOTP client must be explicitly declared in the dhcpd.conf
306 file. A very basic client declaration will specify the client
307 network interface's hardware address and the IP address to assign to
308 that client. If the client needs to be able to load a boot file from
309 the server, that file's name must be specified. A simple bootp
310 client declaration might look like this:
314 hardware ethernet 08:00:2b:4c:59:23;
315 fixed-address 239.252.197.9;
316 filename "/tftpboot/haagen.boot";
320 DHCP (and also BOOTP with Vendor Extensions) provide a mechanism
321 whereby the server can provide the client with information about how
322 to configure its network interface (e.g., subnet mask), and also how
323 the client can access various network services (e.g., DNS, IP routers,
326 These options can be specified on a per-subnet basis, and, for BOOTP
327 clients, also on a per-client basis. In the event that a BOOTP
328 client declaration specifies options that are also specified in its
329 subnet declaration, the options specified in the client declaration
330 take precedence. A reasonably complete DHCP configuration might
331 look something like this:
334 subnet 239.252.197.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
335 range 239.252.197.10 239.252.197.250;
336 default-lease-time 600 max-lease-time 7200;
337 option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
338 option broadcast-address 239.252.197.255;
339 option routers 239.252.197.1;
340 option domain-name-servers 239.252.197.2, 239.252.197.3;
341 option domain-name "isc.org";
345 A bootp host on that subnet that needs to be in a different domain and
346 use a different name server might be declared as follows:
350 hardware ethernet 08:00:2b:4c:59:23;
351 fixed-address 239.252.197.9;
352 filename "/tftpboot/haagen.boot";
353 option domain-name-servers 192.5.5.1;
354 option domain-name "vix.com";
358 A more complete description of the dhcpd.conf file syntax is provided
361 The DHCP server provides the capability to modify some of its
362 configuration while it is running, without stopping it, modifying its
363 database files, and restarting it. This capability is currently
364 provided using OMAPI - an API for manipulating remote objects. OMAPI
365 clients connect to the server using TCP/IP, authenticate, and can then
366 examine the server's current status and make changes to it.
368 Rather than implementing the underlying OMAPI protocol directly, user
369 programs should use the dhcpctl API or OMAPI itself. Dhcpctl is a
370 wrapper that handles some of the housekeeping chores that OMAPI does
371 not do automatically. Dhcpctl and OMAPI are documented in \fBdhcpctl(3)\fR
374 OMAPI exports objects, which can then be examined and modified. The
375 DHCP server exports the following objects: lease, host,
376 failover-state and group. Each object has a number of methods that
377 are provided: lookup, create, and destroy. In addition, it is
378 possible to look at attributes that are stored on objects, and in some
379 cases to modify those attributes.
381 Leases can't currently be created or destroyed, but they can be looked
382 up to examine and modify their state.
384 Leases have the following attributes:
386 .B state \fIinteger\fR lookup, examine
401 .B ip-address \fIdata\fR lookup, examine
403 The IP address of the lease.
406 .B dhcp-client-identifier \fIdata\fR lookup, examine, update
409 client identifier that the client used when it acquired the lease.
410 Not all clients send client identifiers, so this may be empty.
413 .B client-hostname \fIdata\fR examine, update
415 The value the client sent in the host-name option.
418 .B host \fIhandle\fR examine
420 the host declaration associated with this lease, if any.
423 .B subnet \fIhandle\fR examine
425 the subnet object associated with this lease (the subnet object is not
426 currently supported).
429 .B pool \fIhandle\fR examine
431 the pool object associted with this lease (the pool object is not
432 currently supported).
435 .B billing-class \fIhandle\fR examine
437 the handle to the class to which this lease is currently billed, if
438 any (the class object is not currently supported).
441 .B hardware-address \fIdata\fR examine, update
443 the hardware address (chaddr) field sent by the client when it
447 .B hardware-type \fIinteger\fR examine, update
449 the type of the network interface that the client reported when it
453 .B ends \fItime\fR examine
455 the time when the lease's current state ends, as understood by the
459 .B tstp \fItime\fR examine
461 the time when the lease's current state ends, as understood by the
464 .B tsfp \fItime\fR examine
466 the time when the lease's current state ends, as understood by the
467 failover peer (if there is no failover peer, this value is
471 .B cltt \fItime\fR examine
473 The time of the last transaction with the client on this lease.
476 Hosts can be created, destroyed, looked up, examined and modified.
477 If a host declaration is created or deleted using OMAPI, that
478 information will be recorded in the dhcpd.leases file. It is
479 permissible to delete host declarations that are declared in the
482 Hosts have the following attributes:
484 .B name \fIdata\fR lookup, examine, modify
486 the name of the host declaration. This name must be unique among all
490 .B group \fIhandle\fR examine, modify
492 the named group associated with the host declaration, if there is one.
495 .B hardware-address \fIdata\fR lookup, examine, modify
497 the link-layer address that will be used to match the client, if any.
498 Only valid if hardware-type is also present.
501 .B hardware-type \fIinteger\fR lookup, examine, modify
503 the type of the network interface that will be used to match the
504 client, if any. Only valid if hardware-address is also present.
507 .B dhcp-client-identifier \fIdata\fR lookup, examine, modify
509 the dhcp-client-identifier option that will be used to match the
513 .B ip-address \fIdata\fR examine, modify
515 a fixed IP address which is reserved for a DHCP client that matches
516 this host declaration. The IP address will only be assigned to the
517 client if it is valid for the network segment to which the client is
521 .B statements \fIdata\fR modify
523 a list of statements in the format of the dhcpd.conf file that will be
524 executed whenever a message from the client is being processed.
527 .B known \fIinteger\fR examine, modify
529 if nonzero, indicates that a client matching this host declaration
530 will be treated as \fIknown\fR in pool permit lists. If zero, the
531 client will not be treated as known.
534 Named groups can be created, destroyed, looked up, examined and
535 modified. If a group declaration is created or deleted using OMAPI,
536 that information will be recorded in the dhcpd.leases file. It is
537 permissible to delete group declarations that are declared in the
540 Named groups currently can only be associated with
541 hosts - this allows one set of statements to be efficiently attached
542 to more than one host declaration.
544 Groups have the following attributes:
548 the name of the group. All groups that are created using OMAPI must
549 have names, and the names must be unique among all groups.
552 .B statements \fIdata\fR
554 a list of statements in the format of the dhcpd.conf file that will be
555 executed whenever a message from a client whose host declaration
556 references this group is processed.
558 .SH THE CONTROL OBJECT
559 The control object allows you to shut the server down. If the server
560 is doing failover with another peer, it will make a clean transition
561 into the shutdown state and notify its peer, so that the peer can go
562 into partner down, and then record the "recover" state in the lease
563 file so that when the server is restarted, it will automatically
564 resynchronize with its peer.
566 On shutdown the server will also attempt to cleanly shut down all
567 OMAPI connections. If these connections do not go down cleanly after
568 five seconds, they are shut down pre-emptively. It can take as much
569 as 25 seconds from the beginning of the shutdown process to the time
570 that the server actually exits.
572 To shut the server down, open its control object and set the state
574 .SH THE FAILOVER-STATE OBJECT
575 The failover-state object is the object that tracks the state of the
576 failover protocol as it is being managed for a given failover peer.
577 The failover object has the following attributes (please see
579 for explanations about what these attributes mean):
581 .B name \fIdata\fR examine
583 Indicates the name of the failover peer relationship, as described in
584 the server's \fBdhcpd.conf\fR file.
587 .B partner-address \fIdata\fR examine
589 Indicates the failover partner's IP address.
592 .B local-address \fIdata\fR examine
594 Indicates the IP address that is being used by the DHCP server for
598 .B partner-port \fIdata\fR examine
600 Indicates the TCP port on which the failover partner is listening for
601 failover protocol connections.
604 .B local-port \fIdata\fR examine
606 Indicates the TCP port on which the DHCP server is listening for
607 failover protocol connections for this failover pair.
610 .B max-outstanding-updates \fIinteger\fR examine
612 Indicates the number of updates that can be outstanding and
613 unacknowledged at any given time, in this failover relationship.
616 .B mclt \fIinteger\fR examine
618 Indicates the maximum client lead time in this failover relationship.
621 .B load-balance-max-secs \fIinteger\fR examine
623 Indicates the maximum value for the secs field in a client request
624 before load balancing is bypassed.
627 .B load-balance-hba \fIdata\fR examine
629 Indicates the load balancing hash bucket array for this failover
633 .B local-state \fIinteger\fR examine, modify
635 Indicates the present state of the DHCP server in this failover
636 relationship. Possible values for state are:
643 3 - communications interrupted
644 4 - resolution interrupted
645 5 - potential conflict
656 In general it is not a good idea to make changes to this state.
657 However, in the case that the failover partner is known to be down, it
658 can be useful to set the DHCP server's failover state to partner
659 down. At this point the DHCP server will take over service of the
660 failover partner's leases as soon as possible, and will give out
661 normal leases, not leases that are restricted by MCLT. If you do put
662 the DHCP server into the partner-down when the other DHCP server is
663 not in the partner-down state, but is not reachable, IP address
664 assignment conflicts are possible, even likely. Once a server has
665 been put into partner-down mode, its failover partner must not be
666 brought back online until communication is possible between the two
670 .B partner-state \fIinteger\fR examine
672 Indicates the present state of the failover partner.
675 .B local-stos \fIinteger\fR examine
677 Indicates the time at which the DHCP server entered its present state
678 in this failover relationship.
681 .B partner-stos \fIinteger\fR examine
683 Indicates the time at which the failover partner entered its present state.
686 .B hierarchy \fIinteger\fR examine
688 Indicates whether the DHCP server is primary (0) or secondary (1) in
689 this failover relationship.
692 .B last-packet-sent \fIinteger\fR examine
694 Indicates the time at which the most recent failover packet was sent
695 by this DHCP server to its failover partner.
698 .B last-timestamp-received \fIinteger\fR examine
700 Indicates the timestamp that was on the failover message most recently
701 received from the failover partner.
704 .B skew \fIinteger\fR examine
706 Indicates the skew between the failover partner's clock and this DHCP
710 .B max-response-delay \fIinteger\fR examine
712 Indicates the time in seconds after which, if no message is received
713 from the failover partner, the partner is assumed to be out of
717 .B cur-unacked-updates \fIinteger\fR examine
719 Indicates the number of update messages that have been received from
720 the failover partner but not yet processed.
723 .B ETCDIR/dhcpd.conf, DBDIR/dhcpd.leases, RUNDIR/dhcpd.pid,
724 .B DBDIR/dhcpd.leases~.
726 dhclient(8), dhcrelay(8), dhcpd.conf(5), dhcpd.leases(5)
729 was originally written by Ted Lemon under a contract with Vixie Labs.
730 Funding for this project was provided by Internet Systems
731 Consortium. Version 3 of the DHCP server was funded by Nominum, Inc.
732 Information about Internet Systems Consortium is available at
733 .B http://www.isc.org/\fR.
734 Information about Nominum can be found at \fBhttp://www.nominum.com/\fR.