feature or bug

[Zhe Yao]

Hi All,

We are running several machines, some of them are ubuntu 10.04 which
has dhcp3-client (3.1.3), and others run ubuntu 11.10 which has
isc-dhcp-client (4.1.1).
We notice different behaviours between these two versions.

When the dhcp server (from ISC as well) is offline for a while, the
clients decide to give up trying to contact the server any more, they
assign private ip addresses (169.254.*) to the network interfaces.
After this happens, the dhcp client (3.1.3) on 10.04 is still running
in the background, so as far as the server is back, new ip addresses
are assigned from the server, and everything is back to normal.
But for dhcp client (4.1.1) on 11.10, the client daemon suicides.
Hence, even the server is back, the network interface stays with the
private addresses until we have to manually invoke ifdown/ifup
commands, which is impossible for remote management.

We are wondering whether this is a feature or a bug.
Any input appreciated.

Best,
Zhe Yao
--------------
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
McGill University
Montreal, QC, Canada
H3A 2A7

zhe.yao at mail.mcgill.ca