Re: Retiring dhclient

[Ted Lemon <mellon%fugue.com@localhost>]

On Nov 16, 2011, at 10:10 AM, Joerg Sonnenberger 
<joerg%britannica.bec.de@localhost> wrote:
> DHCPv6 support is a sore point in NetBSD for now and fixing that one way
> or the other would be appreciated. Getting the support for the server is
> pretty much a no brainer.

Except for the libisc problem Christos described.

> For the client, it raises a few questions
> about which data set to pick when both DHCP and DHCPv6 are available for
> an interface and have a non-empty symmetric difference.   Another item is
> how to deal with partial support in the presence of multiple interfaces.
> Consider having both IPv4 and IPv6 available via WLAN and only IPv4 via
> Ethernet -- do you still want to enable IPv6 routing?


This is impossible to resolve if we treat configuration information as 
per-host.   There's work going on in the IETF to consider configuration 
information per-provisioning-domain, where IPv4 and IPv6 would be considered 
separate provisioning domains, and results from different interfaces (e.g., 
wired and wireless) would also be considered separate provisioning domains.

I think this is the only way to successfully address this issue, but of course 
it requires substantial changes to the way programs that connect to the network 
behave.   IMHO the work needs to be done in userland, not in the kernel; I can 
explain at length if there is interet.

>  What is the status in this area for dhclient?

AFAIK, not implemented.

> What about RA handling? Does dhclient depend on the kernel / rtsol for
> that?

It definitely does not do ND itself.

> It exists for the sake of network manager like applications. It is also
> a separate program, so no nasty tentacles in the main code :)
> Personally, I don't use it.

Yup, that's pretty much my experience of it too.  :)