[Kea-users] debian 13, kea-dhcp4 deads after using include directive in conf file

[nazzareno taborgna]

Thank you Carsten,

the absolute path to reservation.json file is working and now I have the 
process running.

Bye,

n.taborgna

Il 16/01/26 11:20, Carsten Strotmann via Kea-users ha scritto:
> Hi,
>
> On 16 Jan 2026, at 10:39, nazzareno.taborgna at lngs.infn.it wrote:
>
>> Thank you Peter,
>> after changing the double quote (never trust of copy and paste... ), the
>> log shows another kind of error:
>>
>> gen 16 10:36:32 testkea (ea-dhcp4)[1950]: kea-dhcp4-server.service:
>> ConfigurationDirectory 'kea' already exists but the mode is different.
>> (File system: 750 ConfigurationDirectoryMode: 755)
>> gen 16 10:36:32 testkea kea-dhcp4[1950]: 2026-01-16 10:36:32.528 INFO
>> [kea-dhcp4.dhcp4/1950.139623653353408] DHCP4_STARTING Kea DHCPv4 server
>> version 2.6.3 (stable) starting
>> gen 16 10:36:32 testkea kea-dhcp4[1950]: 2026-01-16 10:36:32.529 ERROR
>> [kea-dhcp4.dhcp4/1950.139623653353408] DHCP4_CONFIG_LOAD_FAIL
>> configuration error using file: /etc/kea/kea-dhcp4.conf, reason: Can't
>> open include file reservation.json
>> gen 16 10:36:32 testkea kea-dhcp4[1950]: 2026-01-16 10:36:32.529 ERROR
>> [kea-dhcp4.dhcp4/1950.139623653353408] DHCP4_INIT_FAIL failed to
>> initialize Kea server: configuration error using file
>> '/etc/kea/kea-dhcp4.conf': Can't open include file reservation.json
>> gen 16 10:36:32 testkea systemd[1]: kea-dhcp4-server.service: Main process
>> exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
>>
>> but the file reservation.json is there:
>>
>> root at testkea:/etc/kea# ls -lart
>> totale 104
>> -rw-r--r--  1 root root  3025  2 giu  2025 kea-dhcp-ddns.conf
>> -rw-r--r--  1 root root 19984  2 giu  2025 kea-dhcp6.conf
>> -rw-r--r--  1 root root  5697  2 giu  2025 kea-ctrl-agent.conf
>> -rw-r-----  1 root _kea    11  8 gen 18.11 kea-api-password
>> -rw-r--r--  1 root root 22605 14 gen 10.51 kea-dhcp4.conf_buono
>> -rwxr--r--  1 root root   106 14 gen 16.06 reservation.json
>> drwxr-xr-x 74 root root  4096 15 gen 21.59 ..
>> -rw-r--r--  1 root root 30108 16 gen 10.28 kea-dhcp4.conf
>> drwxr-x---  2 _kea _kea  4096 16 gen 10.28 .
>>
>> what it happens now?
>>
> try to specify the full path. Kea-DHCP tries to open the files based on the current directory of the kea-dhcp4 process, which might be set to the file system root ("/").
>
> <?include "/etc/kea/reservation.json"?>
>
> should work.
>
> Greetings
>
> Carsten