Re: ifupdown/dhcp
08.05.2022 18:24, Michael Stone wrote:
[apologies to package aliases getting this twice due to autocomplete fail]
I've been trying to make sense of the NEWS item in isc-dhcp-client (that alternatives are needed) in combination with the functionality of ifupdown
and what the implications are for debian upgrades generally.
isc-dhcp-client as of the last upgrade is telling users to stop using it (the default dhcp client for debian).
ifupdown (the traditional tool for managing networking on debian systems) has a Recommends on "isc-dhcp-client | dhcp-client". "dhcp-client" is a
virtual package provided by "dhcpcanon" (version 0.8.5, which hasn't been touched in 4 years), "isc-dhcp-client", and "dhcpcd5" (which will trash a
working configuration managed by ifupdown if installed, as it will try to take over interfaces currently set, e.g., to manual). This seems suboptimal
at best.
I believe that ifupdown will attempt to use udhcpd if installed, which should be a mostly-transparent change (except for the potential loss of lease
information and any customization of dhclient scripts) but it isn't even on the ifupdown recommends list.
Yes ifupdown knows about udhcpd. I dunno how seriuos this one is, the udhcpcd from busybox.
We use it in many different cases locally, and a few times I used it on a regular linux
client in various public networks, it is scriptable (it relies on the script to do the
actual work). It is maintained, - well, hopefully, - and in debian, I maintained this
package for quite some years locally before, next stepped up as debian maintainer of
busybox package, and continue to maintain it locally for another several years. Recently
I thought about giving it another try to make it in good shape in debian, and others
are doing their work there too.
busybox is recommended by initramfs-tools, so it is installed on all debian systems
where install-recommends is not explicitly set to false, so it is always available,
more or less (the udhcpcd package is just a symlink to busybox).
But I never really thought about it as an alternative to "big" dhcp client. I dunno
why, maybe because I always treated busybox as a "small brother" not ready for
anything serious.
Overall it just works, especially after some tweaks to its script. Maybe I should
give it another try too, I dunno.
What's up with ISC dhclient?
Thanks,
/mjt
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