Instability?

Alex Moen alexm at ndtel.com
Sat Jul 18 16:11:19 UTC 2009


Awesome.  Saw that, but didn't recognize it as the problem.

Knew I could count on one of you guys!

Thanks!

Alex



On Jul 18, 2009, at 10:43 AM, Glenn Satchell wrote:

>
>> 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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