[kea-dev] Inconsistent log severity for RELEASE success between DHCPv4 and DHCPv6

[Thomas Reagan]

Hi all,

Quick question, short version: DHCPv4 and DHCPv6 log a successful client RELEASE at different severities — DHCPv6 at INFO, DHCPv4 at DEBUG. Is this intentional?

Longer version: 

I'm running Kea 3.0.3 and building some tooling on the back of log notices.  I noticed that the same semantic event — "client released its lease successfully, normal shutdown" — is logged at different levels depending on protocol:
DHCPv4 (DHCP4_RELEASE): "address was released properly" → DEBUG
DHCPv6 (DHCP6_RELEASE_NA): "was released properly" → INFO
Both describe normal, successful operation — not an error or warning condition.

To reproduce: start kea-dhcp4 and kea-dhcp6 with default logging, trigger a client RELEASE (e.g., dhclient -r), and compare the severity of the "released properly" log lines between the two daemons.

Why it matters in practice: with default INFO-level logging, DHCPv4 release events are invisible, while DHCPv6 releases show up fine. This makes log-driven automation (cleanup scripts, monitoring, alerting) behave differently across protocol versions in ways that are easy to miss.

Suggested fix: promote DHCP4_RELEASE to INFO to match DHCPv6 behavior. If there's a deliberate reason for the asymmetry, I'd love to understand it — and a note in the docs would help others hit by the same surprise.

Happy to open a GitLab issue if that's more appropriate than a list thread, I just wasn’t sure where else to ask!

Best,

Tom Reagan
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