Declined entries in /etc/dhcpdb...

[Lee Harris_5]

Hi,

We've been having a strange issue with DHCP that seems to only affect certain types of device. We have wireless devices which will when booted obtain an IP address from our 11.00 servers. However, we are seeing issues when a number of these wireless devices will be unable to logon to the server, and give an error about being unable to connect to the boot server.

When looking in /etc/dhcpdb we will see a number of Declined entries which show the MAC addresses of the wireless devices in question.

This coincides with entries similar to the following in syslog...

Dec 13 11:57:45 unixbox bootpd[14522]: Received DHCPREQUEST creating DHCPACK. R
equest data: ha = 00A0F77E7CC1, req IP not sent, ciaddr XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX, giaddr 0
.0.0.0, broadcast reply off, server id not sent.

To workaround the problem, we removed the delined entries from /etc/dhcpdb, kill the bootpd process and then bounce inetd and the wireless devices are then able to connect again, but the problem seems to reoccur regularly. This is affecting a number of different 11.00 servers on different networks.

Anyone seen anything like this before?

Many Thanks - Lee

[Steven E. Protter]

There should be accompanying entries in /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log

This could perhaps be generated by having more requests for ip addresses than adddreses.

Perhaps these devices are getting disconnected regulary and requesting new addresses before the old one is released.

First, I'd make sure I was current on quarterly patches and patches with the keyword dhcp.

I'd have enhanced logging with the inetd -l option and try and see whats going on with the system when this happens.

I'd also look at the wireless device and see what the requirements of the dhcp server is. There may be a comatability issue.

I have not seen this issue but dhcp is in limited use in our network, only three devices, all Ignite clients.

SEP