DHCP server for UNIX

There are several DHCP servers available for U*X-like OSes,both commercial and free. One of the more popular free DHCP serversis Paul Vixie/ISC DHCPd. Currently the latest version is 2.0 (suggestedfor most users) but 3.0 is in beta testing. You can get them from

ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/dhcp/

Some of the distributions provide binary packages for dhcpd soskip the following section if you got it installed that way.

After you download unpack it. After you do cd into thedistribution directory and type: ./configure

It will take some time to configure the settings. After it is done type:make and make install.

DHCP server configuration

When done with installation type ifconfig -a. Youshould see something like this:

eth0      Link encap:10Mbps Ethernet  HWaddr 00:C0:4F:D3:C4:62          inet addr:183.217.19.43  Bcast:183.217.19.255  Mask:255.255.255.0          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1          RX packets:2875542 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0          TX packets:218647 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0          Interrupt:11 Base address:0x210

If it doesn’t say MULTICAST you should reconfigure yourkernel and add multicast support. On most systems you will not need to do this.

Next step is to add route for 255.255.255.255. Quoted from DHCPd README:

“In order for dhcpd to work correctly with picky DHCP clients (e.g., Windows 95), it must be able to send packets with an IP destination address of 255.255.255.255. Unfortunately, Linux insists on changing 255.255.255.255 into the local subnet broadcast address (here, that’s 192.5.5.223). This results in a DHCP protocol violation, and while many DHCP clients don’t notice the problem, some (e.g., all MicrosoftDHCP clients) do. Clients that have this problem will appear not to see DHCPOFFER messages from the server.”

Type: route add -host 255.255.255.255 dev eth0

If you get a message “255.255.255.255: Unknown host“,you should try adding the following entry to your/etc/hosts file:

255.255.255.255 all-ones

Then, try:

route add -host all-ones dev eth0

or

route add 255.255.255.0 dev eth0

eth0 is of course the name of the network device youare using. If it differs change appropriately.

Options for DHCPd

Now you need to configure DHCPd. In order to do this youwill have to create or edit /etc/dhcpd.conf. Thereis a graphical interface for dhcpd configuration under KDE ( http://www.kde.org/ ) called kcmdhcpdthat is very similar to the DHCP configurator on Windows NT. When KDE2.0 comes out it should come with kcmdhcpd or you could get it directlyfrom linux ftp server at:

ftp://ftp.us.kde.org/pub/kde/unstable/apps/network/

If you want to configure it by hand follow instructions below.

Most commonly what you want to do is assign IP addresses randomly. Thiscan be done with settings as follows:

# Sample /etc/dhcpd.conf# (add your comments here) default-lease-time 600;max-lease-time 7200;option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;option broadcast-address 192.168.1.255;option routers 192.168.1.254;option domain-name-servers 192.168.1.1, 192.168.1.2;option domain-name "mydomain.org";subnet 192.168.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {   range 192.168.1.10 192.168.1.100;   range 192.168.1.150 192.168.1.200;}

This will result in linux DHCP server giving a client an IP addressfrom the range 192.168.1.10-192.168.1.100 or 192.168.1.150-192.168.1.200. It will lease an IP address for600 seconds if the client doesn’t ask for specific timeframe. Otherwise the maximum (allowed) lease will be 7200 seconds. Theserver will also “advise” the client that it should use 255.255.255.0 asits subnet mask, 192.168.1.255 as its broadcast address, 192.168.1.254 asthe router/gateway and 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2 as its DNS servers.

If you need to specify a WINS server for your Windows clients youwill need to include the netbios-name-servers option e.g.

option netbios-name-servers 192.168.1.1;

You can also assign specific IP addresses based on clientsethernet address e.g.

host haagen {   hardware ethernet 08:00:2b:4c:59:23;   fixed-address 192.168.1.222;}

This will assign IP address 192.168.1.222 to a client with ethernetaddress 08:00:2b:4c:59:23.

You can also mix and match e.g. you can have certain clients getting”static” IP addresses (e.g. servers) and others being alloteddynamic IPs (e.g. mobile users with laptops). There are a number of otheroptions e.g. nis server addresses, time server addresses etc., if youneed any of those options please read thedhcpd.conf man page.

Starting the server

There is only one thing to do before starting the server. In most casesDHCP installation doesn’t create a dhcpd.leasesfiles. This file is used by DHCPd to store information about currentleases. It is in the plain text form so you can view it during theoperation of DHCPd. To create dhcpd.leases type:

touch /var/state/dhcp/dhcpd.leases

This will create an empty file (file size = 0).Some of the older version of dhcpd 2.0 placed the file in/etc/dhcpd.leases. You do not need to make anychanges to the leases file it will be manipulated by the dhcpd. If youget a message saying that file exists simply ignore it and go to thenext step.

You can now invoke the Linux DHCP server. Simply type (or include in the bootupscripts)

/usr/sbin/dhcpd

This will invoke dhcpd on eth0 device. If you want to invoke iton another device simply supply it on the command line e.g.

/usr/sbin/dhcpd eth1

To verify that everything is working fine youshould first turn on the debugging mode and put the serverin foreground. You can do this by typing

/usr/sbin/dhcpd -d -f

Then boot up one of your clients and check out the console of your server. You will see a number of debugging messages come up. If everything works outfine you are done . Quit dhcpd and start it without the-d -f and arguments. If you wantdhcpd to start at boot-up include dhcpd in e.g.

/etc/rc.d/rc.local