Internet Software Consortium
- Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol Server
- Beta Release 5
- August 29, 1996
+ Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol Distribution
+ Development Snapshot
+ November 22, 1997
Release Notes
- !!!!!!! IMPORTANT !!!!!!!
+This is the final development snapshot before Version 2 of the
+Internet Software Consortium DHCP Distribution goes to beta.
+Development snapshots after this one will be for Version 3 of the ISC
+DHCP Server.
- THE FORMAT OF THE dhcpd.conf AND dhcpd.leases FILES HAS CHANGED!
+New in this snapshot:
- !!!!!!! IMPORTANT !!!!!!!
+ - more manual pages
+ - lots of minor and some major bug fixes.
-If you are currently using dhcpd Beta 4 Patchlevel 7 or earlier, YOU
-MUST CONVERT YOUR LEASE DATABASE AND CONFIGURATION FILES before
-running the new version of DHCPD. At best, dhcpd will not work. At
-worst, the lease database could be erased.
+This snapshot is being released in the hopes that a fair number of
+DHCP sites will download it, try it out, and submit bug reports and
+critique the new manual pages. Please do not hold back - the plan is
+to cut the first Beta release in about two weeks - at the beginning of
+December.
-To convert your dhcpd.leases and dhcpd.conf files, make a backup copy
-of each file and then run the dhcpxlt command with the old config file
-as input and the new config file as output. For example:
+Version 1 of the ISC DHCP Distribution included just a DHCP Server.
+As of this writing, the most recent Version 1 distribution is Beta 5
+Patchlevel 16. One more patchlevel is planned before Version 1.0 is
+finalized. This is the release that we would expect most sites to run
+in production.
- mv /etc/dhcpd.conf /etc/dhcpd.conf.old
- ./dhcpxlt </etc/dhcpd.conf.old >/etc/dhcpd.conf
- mv /var/db/dhcpd.leases /var/db/dhcpd.leases.old
- ./dhcpxlt </var/db/dhcpd.leases.old >/var/db/dhcpd.leases
+Version 2 of the ISC DHCP Distribution adds a DHCP Client and a
+DHCP/BOOTP Relay Agent to the DHCP Server that was offered in version
+1.0. In addition, some new capabilities have been added to the
+server:
-The dhcpxlt command has been tested and appears to work, but it is
-brand new and has only been tested by one person - me - at one site -
-mine. Unfortunately, my site is relatively simple, so there's a
-decent chance that I've overlooked something. Please proceed with
-caution.
+ - IP addresses are now tested before they are assigned to
+ clients. This allows the DHCP server to detect rogue
+ machines that may have hijacked IP addresses before an IP
+ address conflict can occur.
- NEW FEATURES
+ - The server may be configured so that some DHCP clients can
+ be excluded from booting.
- NEW CONFIG FILE FORMAT
+This version is fairly stable at this time, and will soon be
+moved to the "stable" track. It has a number of new features, and is
+the release that we would expect sites that want some stability but
+need the new pinging feature, or need a client or relay agent (but
+note that you can run the Version 1 server alongside the Version 2
+client and relay agent).
-Obviously, the first new feature is that the configuration file
-formats have been changed. The old format was a major source of
-confusion for new users. The new format uses braces for nesting and
-semicolons to end every statement, so what in the old version looked
-like:
+Version 3 of the ISC DHCP Distribution will add Dynamic DNS Support,
+asynchronous DNS query resolution, DHCP Authentication, and possibly
+support for a DHCP Interserver Protocol and live querying of the DHCP
+database. This release is not expected to be stable in the near
+future, and is intended for sites that are in a position to
+experiment, or for sites that desperately need the new features.
-shared-network FOO
- option domain-name "fugue.com"
- subnet 204.254.239.0 netmask 255.255.255.224
- option routers 204.254.239.1
- subnet 205.254.239.32 netmask 255.255.255.224
- option routers 204.254.239.33;
-Now looks like:
-
-shared-network FOO {
- option domain-name "fugue.com";
- subnet 204.254.239.0 netmask 255.255.255.224 {
- option routers 204.254.239.1;
- }
- subnet 205.254.239.32 netmask 255.255.255.224 {
- option routers 204.254.239.33;
- }
-}
-
-I'm hoping that this will reduce confusion somewhat.
-
-In addition to changing the file format, I've also documented it
-(finally)! The definitive documentation is in dhcpd.conf.5, and gives
-a complete and hopefully fairly readable description of the syntax,
-along with examples and a reference section.
-
-Also, the parser should now report line numbers correctly. Instead
-of reporting the character position at which the offending token
-starts, it now prints the line containing the offending token with an
-arrow pointing at that token.
-
-Hostnames may now begin with numbers - previously, a hostname like
-1Q7.isc.org would not have been allowed.
-
-Dhcpd will now exit if errors are found in the config file - before,
-it would try to press on. I added this so that dhcpd would not even
-try to read the dhcpd.leases file if the config file was broken.
-
- README FILE UPDATED
-
-Please take a look at the new README file - it's been brought forward
-into the 20th century.
-
- QNX SUPPORT
-
-Brian Stecher of Watcom has donated configuration code for the QNX
-operating system.
-
- MAKEFILE FUN
-
-Several people donated clean targets for the Makefile. The idea
-being that you type ``make clean'', and all the object files are
-removed. I added the target I liked best (donated by Mark Sirota).
-
- DYNAMIC BOOTP LEASES
-
-Mark also suggested a change that would set the expiry date on leases
-for Dynamic BOOTP clients to something other than infinity. Two
-different keywords have been added so that you can set either a cutoff
-date or just a shorter lease length.
-
- MEMORY ALLOCATION ZAPPED
-
-A lot of bugs cropped up in Beta 4 having to do with uninitialized
-allocated memory. I finally gave up and put code in the allocator to
-just zero out every hunk of memory that gets allocated. Ugly, but
-probably worthwhile.
-
- NEW GROUP DECLARATION
-
-Several users have asked for the ability to define client groupings
-with common boot parameters which don't correspond with subnet
-boundaries. This would be useful for a LAN where several departments
-are spread out so that each department has some machines on one subnet
-and some machines on another. It would also be useful for grouping
-particular kinds of hardware together. The syntax looks like this:
-
- group {
- option domain-name "accounting.isc.org";
-
- host foo {...}
- host bar {...}
- host baz {...}
- }
-
- NEXT BOOT SERVER SUPPORT
-
-DHCP and BOOTP clients often need to load a kernel using TFTP or NFS
-once they've configured their network interface. If your TFTP or NFS
-server was the same as your DHCP server, this worked fine, but
-otherwise, there was no way to boot. The next-server parameter now
-allows you to specify the address of the server from which the boot
-file should be loaded.
-
- RESTRICTED DHCP
-
-It is now possible to restrict access to dynamic addresses using the
-boot-unknown-clients parameter. If boot-unknown-clients is turned
-off on a given network, dhcpd will only provide addresses to clients
-for which host entries exist.
-
- DEBUGGING
-
-It is now possible to start dhcpd without having it immediately go
-into the background, using the -f option. This is handy for running
-under a debugger or for running dhcpd out of /etc/inittab. It is
-also possible to get a normally-compiled version of dhcpd to log its
-debugging information to standard error as well as to syslogd, using
-the -d flag.
-
- HOSTNAMES
-
-Dhcpd now looks up the hostnames for each address in the allocation
-pool using gethostbyaddr. If a hostname option was not specified for
-a client, the name is taken from the name of the client's host
-declaration, if there is one. Otherwise, it's taken from the domain
-name associated with the address being assigned to the client. This
-only affects clients that want to learn their hostnames from the
-server.
-
- DHCPD.PID FILE WRITTEN SOONER
-
-One user complained that the dhcpd.pid file was being written after
-the lease database was loaded, and this could take a very significant
-amount of time. Dhcpd now reads the pid file before loading the
-database, and if no server is running on that pid, dhcpd rewrites the
-pid file immediately. There are still race conditions here, but this
-should improve things somewhat.
-
- LOOPBACK AND POINT-TO-POINT INTERFACES AUTOMATICALLY ELIMINATED
-
-I have added code which works everywhere I've tested it so far to
-determine what kind of network connection each identified interface
-provides, and to ignore any interface claiming to be a loopback
-interface or a point-to-point interface. I am somewhat concerned
-that this code may fail on Linux, but it should work on BSD-derived
-TCP stacks, which are present on most Unix systems.
-
- NUMEROUS BUG FIXES
-
-Beta 4 Patchlevel 7 was not a very successful release, mostly because
-I had to do it from Montreal over an X terminal, and so I wasn't able
-to test it. A bunch of bugs introduced in Beta 4.7 have been fixed,
-including:
-
- - NIT no longer consumes excessive resources on SunOS
- - NIT no longer fails on SunOS versions prior to 4.1.4.
- - Mobile hosts should no longer corrupt the in-memory lease
- database (I can't test this here - please let me know)
- - DHCPD no longer gets infinite BOOTREQUESTs when booting
- BOOTP clients on the other side of a BOOTP gateway.
- - DHCPD should dump core less often - a lot of bogus pointer
- dereferences have been fixed.
- - IP aliases should now be handled correctly on Linux
- machines. It would be nice if somebody could test this - I
- can't.
- - Lease times are now printed using printf and read in using a
- hand-coded conversion routine. As a result, dhcpd no
- longer puts GMT times on syslog messages.
- - The lease database code is more robust (I don't know if this
- ever caused any problems).
projects / thirdparty / dhcp.git / commitdiff
