dhcpd pid exists but process not running

[Ausmus, Matt]

Hi Glenn,

Thanks for the response.  Yeah, I know it's old but it's what's native
to CentOS/RHEL.  What I was really looking for and didn't relay at all
was an actual issue that was known giving me a more solid justification
to management to build a custom install of dhcpd besides a generic "it's
old & the new ones have bug fixes and cool new features".  This problem
is an issue but only pops up periodically and our management and
failover mechanism mitigate the issue for the most part.  Management
gets squeamish about installing outside packages mainly because they
just don't understand it which means putting together solid, simple
justifications for moving outside the distribution on production boxes.
The bad (and good) is that 3.0.5 is very solid except for quirks like
this.

I'll put on the thinking cap and get creative for the proposal  ;-)

Thank you again.
____________________________
Matt Ausmus
Network Administrator
Chapman University
635 West Palm Street
Orange, CA  92868
(714)628-2738
mausmus at chapman.edu
 
"Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man."
            -Bucy's Law 
-----Original Message-----
From: Glenn Satchell [mailto:glenn.satchell at uniq.com.au] 
Sent: Thursday, September 02, 2010 11:43 AM
To: Users of ISC DHCP
Subject: Re: dhcpd pid exists but process not running

Hi Matt

Version 3.0.5 is ancient (June 2006). To take advantage of any bug fixes

you should upgrade to a newer version and see if the problem is fixed. 
Versions 4.1.1 or 4.2.0 are recommended.

regards,
-glenn

On 09/03/10 03:01, Ausmus, Matt wrote:
> I'm running CentOS 5.5 with dhcp-3.0.5-23.el5.  I have failover setup
> for these servers. Each building has its own failover pair and serve
> address to around 8 vlans. I'm using tagged vlan interfaces on the
> servers and not dhcp relay. I'm monitoring the service on these
servers
> using a custom Nagios script utilizing dhcping.
>
> Every so often the dhcpd process wedges. When I check the process
> status, the pid exists but the process isn't running. I check the logs
> and don't see any errors. All that is shown is one minute the dhcp
> server is handing out leases and the next it isn't. I restart the
> service and all is fine but I would like to figure out why this is
> happening.
>
> I've checked this lists archives and the CentOS forum archives as well
> as googled for this issue and found bumpkis. Any idea what's happening
> or suggestions on how to debug this issue?
>
> Thanks.
>
> *____________________________*
>
> *Matt** **Ausmus*
>
> *Network Administrator***
>
> *Chapman** **University***
>
> *635 West Palm Street***
>
> *Orange,** **CA 92868***
>
> *(714)628-2738***
>
> *mausmus at chapman.edu <mailto:mausmus at chapman.edu>*
>
> /"We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of
> course, powerful muscles, but no personality."///
>
> / - /Albert Einstein