Linux DHCP Configuration

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) automatically assigns IP addresses and other network configuration information (subnetmask, broadcast address, etc) to computers on a network. A client configured for DHCP will send out a broadcast request to the DHCP server requesting an address. The DHCP server will then issue a "lease" and assign it to that client. The time period of a valid lease can be specified on the server. DHCP reduces the amount of time required to configure clients and allows one to move a computer to various networks and be configured with the appropriate IP address, gateway and subnet mask. For ISP's it conserves the limited number of IP addresses it may use. DHCP servers may assign a "static" IP address to specified hardware. Microsoft NetBios information is often included in the network information sent by the DHCP server.

DHCP assignment:

1. Lease Request: Client broadcasts request to DHCP server with a source address of 0.0.0.0 and a destination address of 255.255.255.255. The request includes the MAC address which is used to direct the reply.
2. IP lease offer: DHCP server replies with an IP address, subnet mask, network gateway, name of the domain, name servers, duration of the lease and the IP address of the DHCP server.
3. Lease Selection: Client recieves offer and broadcasts to al DHCP servers that will accept given offer so that other DHCP server need not make an offer.
4. The DHCP server then sends an ack to the client. The client is configured to use TCP/IP.
5. Lease Renewal: When half of the lease time has expired, the client will issue a new request to the DHCP server.

DHCP server installation:

• Red Hat/CentOS/Fedora: rpm -ivh dhcp-x.xxx.elx.i386.rpm
• Ubuntu/Debian 8: apt-get install dhcp3-server
  ( Later releases of Ubuntu (11.04) used the busybox release known as udhcpd and the configuration is NOT shown here)

Starting DHCP server:

• Red Hat/CentOS/Fedora: service dhcpd start
  (or /etc/rc.d/init.d/dhcpd start for Red Hat, Fedora and CentOS Linux distributions)
• Ubuntu/Debian: /etc/init.d/networking restart

Sample DHCP server config file: (DHCP v3.0.1)

• Red Hat/CentOS/Fedora: /etc/dhcpd.conf
  (See /usr/share/doc/dhcp-3.X/dhcp.conf.sample)
  [Potential Pitfall]: Its /etc/dhcpd.conf NOT /etc/dhcp.conf !!
• Ubuntu/Debian: /etc/default/dhcp3-server
  
   
  
  
  
  Test configuration file for errors with the following command: /etc/rc.d/init.d/dhcpd configtest
  (Other distributions may use: /usr/sbin/dhcpd -f)

Note: The MAC addresses for the static address name server (ns2.your-domain.com),
can be obtained with the command /sbin/ifconfig:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:02:C3:D0:E5:83 inet addr:40.175.42.254 Bcast:40.175.42.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::202:b3ff:fef0:e484/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:4070 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:3878 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:3406445 (3.2 MiB) TX bytes:439612 (429.3 KiB)

When dhcpd is running it will generate entries in the file: /var/lib/dhcp/dhcpd.leases

lease 192.168.1.128 { starts 2 2004/12/01 20:07:05; ends 3 2004/12/02 08:07:05; hardware ethernet 00:00:e8:4a:2c:5c; uid 01:00:00:e8:4c:5d:31; client-hostname "Node1"; }

Options:

• ddns-update-style:
  • interim: allows your DHCP server to update a DNS server whenever it hands out a lease. Allows your DNS server to know which IP addresses are associated with which computers in your network. Requires that your DNS server support DDNS (Dynamic DNS).
  • none: to disable dynamic DNS updates or DNS is not supporting DDNS.
  • ad-hoc: been deprecated and shouldn't be used
• Default options (Red Hat/CentOS/Fedora) are set in /etc/sysconfig/dhcpd

LANs separated by routers: In order to have your DHCP broadcast pass through a router on the the next network, one must configure the router to allow DHCP relay. (Cisco: ip-helper address, Juniper: dhcp-relay) The local lan subnet{ } configuration must come before the configuration directives of the remote LANs.
Look for errors in /var/log/messages