Re: DHCP client with minimal functionality and size

["Steven M. Bellovin" <smb%cs.columbia.edu@localhost>]

On Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:18:29 +0100
Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg%britannica.bec.de@localhost> wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 16, 2008 at 04:26:10PM +0000, Roy Marples wrote:
> > >   Just to clarify - so in this model unplugging and
> > > replugging in an ethernet cable would be expected to run a script
> > > which would kill and potentially restart dhcpdc?
> > > 
> > 
> > Yes, as there is no guarantee the the cable you unplugged is the
> > same one you plug in. For example, you could be configuring your
> > network based on arpinging set gateways. Here's a sample config you
> > could achieve with this in Gentoo.
> 
> This is exactly why I asked for the DHCP client to deal with this.
> Keep the currently configured lease and try to validate it / get a
> new one. This is what Windows is doing with the exception of dropping
> the old lease when it can't get a new one. This is the most sensible
> behaviour.
> 
Right, but it might be a better approach to build something more like
network manager to handle this.  I agree that the current dhclient does
that very badly.


                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb