Continuous DISCOVER/OFFER

[Bruce Hudson]

> Hate to admit being a n00b, but oh well.
> 
> Stood up a new DHCP server on RHEL 5  to replace one on W2k3.
> 
> All seems well, but I am getting continuous (or every 4, 8, 16 seconds) 
> DHCPDISCOVER messages from a particular client system.  The server is 
> sending back DHCPOFFERs, but nothing happens after that.  No lease shows up 
> and the client keeps asking.
> 
> Where should I start looking?  Other systems, "reserved" or otherwise, seem 
> happy.

    One thing to consider is setting the "always-broadcast" option in 
your configuration. According to the man page:

	The DHCP and BOOTP protocols both require DHCP and BOOTP
	clients to set the broadcast bit in the flags field of
	the BOOTP message header. Unfortunately, some DHCP and
	BOOTP clients do not do this, and therefore may not
	receive responses from the DHCP server. The DHCP server
	can be made to always broadcast its responses to clients
	by setting this flag to 'on' for the relevant scope;
	relevant scopes would be inside a conditional statement,
	as a parameter for a class, or as a parameter for a host
	declaration. To avoid creating excess broadcast traffic
	on your network, we recommend that you restrict the use
	of this option to as few clients as possible.

--
Bruce A. Hudson				| Bruce.Hudson at Dal.CA
UCIS, Networks and Systems		|
Dalhousie University			|
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada		| (902) 494-3405