DHCP

From the dhclient man page:

[...] or any leases remaining in the lease database that have not
yet expired, the client will loop through these leases attempting to
validate them, and if it finds one that appears to be valid, it will
use that lease's address [...]
At that time, it consults its own database of old leases and tests
each one that has not yet timed out by pinging the listed router for
that lease to see if that lease could work. [...]

I don't seem to be getting the behaviour I'm expecting, am I
interpreting the above correctly?

I get a leased address of 192.168.1.100. When I reboot/renew and don't
reach a DHCP server, I'll try to continue to use 192.168.1.100 if it
works. To decide if it works, I'll ping the router (as defined by
"option routers"). If I can ping the router, I'll continue to use
192.168.1.100. However if my lease for 192.168.1.100 expires and I
still can't find a DHCP server, I'll stop using 192.168.1.100 even if
it does work.

So once I've decided I have no lease and no DHCP servers, how long do
keep on trying to find a server before I give up permanently? Or do I
ever give up permanently?

[...] The initial-interval statement sets the amount of time between
the first attempt to reach a server and the second attempt to reach a
server. Each time a message is sent, the interval between messages
is incremented by twice the current interval [...] It defaults to ten
seconds.

That implies to me I'll try forever, but the wait between tries
doubles each time. Is that true?

Thanks.
Received on Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:55:26 -0700