My ISP has just changed their servers, and now requires users with static IP
to use DHCP.  (More precisely, when I called, I was specifically told that
those few users who still had static IP addresses would need to "check the
Use DHCP box in the Windows TCP/IP Control Panel", and until I've at least
tried the equivalent of this, arguing about how loony this sounds isn't going
to help.)

When I fire up dhclient, however, it sets the address of the PPP link to 0
(specifically "inet 0.0.0.0 -> 255.255.255.255 netmask 0xff000000"), and
then proceeds to fail miserably:

Listening on BPF/ppp0/00:00:00:00:00
Sending on   BPF/ppp0/00:00:00:00:00
Sending on   Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on ppp0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 5
send_packet: Input/output error
DHCPDISCOVER on ppp0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 13
send_packet: Input/output error
DHCPDISCOVER on ppp0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
send_packet: Input/output error
DHCPDISCOVER on ppp0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
send_packet: Input/output error
DHCPDISCOVER on ppp0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 13
send_packet: Input/output error
DHCPDISCOVER on ppp0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 10
send_packet: Input/output error
DHCPDISCOVER on ppp0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 5
send_packet: Input/output error
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.


So:  does anyone use dhclient over PPP?  How do I configure it to work
properly without blindly hammering the ppp0 interface address?  (Or at
least hammering it in such a way that it will actually work.)  And does
anyone believe that sending a dhcp request will convince their dialup
network to re-issue my static address like the phone clone promised?

Thanks,
John Woods
jfw@vrx.net (usually jfw@funhouse.com)