I just wanted to pick up this subject again, because it doesn't seem
to work. (at least for me.)
retry and reboot options in etc/dhclient.conf seems to be ignored.

Meanwhile I found out that FreeBSD switched from ISC dhclient to
OpenBSD's dhclient implementation since 6.0. Anybody know why ?

Anyway, I just wanted to express that the current state of dhclient is
unsatisfying.
There seems to be no way to obtain an IP Adress, after you missed the
initial dhclient discover process. :/
Grrr.....


2006/11/15, Zafer Aydogan <zafer@aydogan.de>:
> Hello Steven,
>
> it would be great if the dhclient.conf manpage would contain the
> default location for itself (for the file dhclient.conf). I guess it's
> /etc/dhclient.conf but it isn't mentioned anywhere.
> And the unit of time in the retry statement "retry [time]" would be
> great. It says the default is 5 minutes, but the example at the bottom
> says "retry 60;", so I guess it's seconds.
>
> Least but not last. It doesn't matter what I enter for retry, it is ignored.
>
> Cheers, Zafer.
>
>
>
> 2006/11/15, Steven M. Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu>:
> > On Wed, 15 Nov 2006 17:32:42 +0100, "Zafer Aydogan" <zafer@aydogan.de>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > 2006/11/15, Steven M. Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu>:
> >
> > > > See the dhclient.conf man page -- you can change 'retry' (and some other
> > > > timer-related options) to change that behavior.
> > > >
> > > >                 --Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
> > > >
> > > I did. It looks promising. But it didn't work.
> > > I run tcpdump and kept an eye on it.
> > > The man page says the default retry time is 5 minutes.
> > > I waited 18 Minutes and nothing happened. The interface is up and
> > > active but has still no IP.
> > >
> > >
> > > and Hubert's quote doesn't work either.
> > > "from dhclient(8): ``Old leases are kept around in case the DHCP server is
> > > unavailable when dhclient is first invoked (generally during the initial
> > > system boot process).  In that event, old leases from the dhclient.leases
> > > file which have not yet expired are tested, and if they are determined to
> > > be valid, they are used until either they expire or the DHCP server
> > > becomes available.''
> > >
> > > I see the message "using old lease 192.168.0.203", but the interface
> > > doesn't get configured.
> > >
> > >
> > > Anything else I can do ?
> > > I'm running current from 8th Nov. and my ethernet interface is fxp0.
> > > (It's running very well.)
> > > Is this maybe a dhclient bug ?
> > > Zafer.
> > >
> > I'll reply in more detail later -- I have a feeling something more complex
> > is going on.
> >
> >                 --Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
> >
>