Instability?

Glenn Satchell Glenn.Satchell at uniq.com.au
Sat Jul 18 15:43:25 UTC 2009


>From: Alex Moen <alexm at ndtel.com>
>To: Users of ISC DHCP <dhcp-users at lists.isc.org>
>Date: Sat, 18 Jul 2009 09:56:54 -0500
>
>Hello all,
>
>I have a fairly complex server running, version 4.1.0 on Solaris 10 (I  
>know, 4.1.1 is out, but I didn't see anything in the release notes  
>about this problem).  Each of the 40-some config files is allowing  
>clients based on VCI and vlan.  There are many requests that are  
>denied because the VCI does not match, which is very much expected, so  
>there are many "No free leases" entries in the log file.  This  
>situation arises because this server is serving the networks for our  
>IPTV set top boxes, and we only allow set top boxes to get an address  
>and deny all other devices (such as firewalls, PC's, etc.)  However,  
>customers still plug devices into the video-only ethernet ports on the  
>DSL modems and FTTP ONT's thinking that they can use these ports for  
>Internet access.
>
>I have noticed that the DHCP process becomes unpredictably  
>unresponsive (is that proper grammer????).  I do not know if it is  
>because of the number of denies.  I do know that during one of these  
>unresponsive spells, tcpdump shows dhcp packets arriving at the  
>server, but no responses leaving the server, and no log entries  
>signifying the receipt of the requests by the DHCP process.  The  
>server itself is still responsive, and not by any means locked up,  
>it's just like the DHCP process takes a nap.  "ps -ef" shows that the  
>process is still running.
>
>I have checked other things, like disk space (not by any means full),  
>processor load, memory availability, etc. Everything seems fine, and a  
>restart of the process fires the server back up and it performs just  
>fine.  It is not a busy server by any means, I have other DHCP servers  
>running that are way busier (on similar hardware) that don't have a  
>problem, but also do not deal with nearly as many denies.
>
>What is the best way to troubleshoot this?
>
>Thanks for any ideas,
>
>Alex

Upgrade to 4.1.1 (b1 minimum). There is a known problem with the DLPI
interface and it has these exact symptoms. I could not even get 4.1.0
to work on my Solaris 10 box.

This is in the RELNOTES, fixes since 4.1.0:

- A bug in DLPI packet transmission (Solaris, HP/UX) that caused the server
  to stop receiving packets is fixed.  The same fix also means that the MAC
  address will no longer appear 'bogus' on DLPI-based systems.

regards,
-glenn





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