Kea Experiment Update

[Charles Curley <charlescurley@charlescurley.com>]

I'm experimenting with kea, the ISC's replacement for their dhcpd
server. So far I am cautiously optimistic.

I have kea up and running in a limited trixie environment. It handles
one client computer on a direct IPv4 only Ethernet link. I have imported
my dhcpd list of reserved hosts, and kea recognizes one of them, and
assigns the proper IP address and host name.

I have not experimented with ddns updating or kea's replacement for
failover, which kea calls high availability. I will want both of those.

If you are contemplating a similar conversion, I suggest the following:

* Install keama and use that to translate your dhcpd configuration
  file(s). Hang on to them.

* Do the usual installation with apt or your favorite tool. Get
  familiar with the configuration files in /etc/kea. Get kea running as
  is with no customizations. This will involve assigning one or more
  interfaces in an "interfaces-config" statement. If you don't do that,
  the server will refuse to run, handy for those who use only one of
  IPv4 or IPv6.

* Once you've done that, introduce one or a few changes at a time. I
  keep a terminal window open with:

  journalctl --no-pager -n 60 -f -u kea-dhcp4-server.service

  running. Errors will show up there. In my experience most errors are
  JSON syntax errors, often caused by not copying over your
  configuration correctly.

  I reload the server with its newly edited configuration with

  systemctl reload-or-restart kea-dhcp4-server.service

  You can also check on your leases with

  cat /var/lib/kea/kea-leases4.csv*

My next steps:

* Upgrade or re-install my firewall/network services server to trixie.
  I won't do this until about a month after trixie is release.

* Install kea and bind. Get those running separately.

* Get DDNS running.

* Get another kea server running trixie.

* Get bind and kea running there.

* Set up high availability between the two kea servers.

* Turn some or all of this into a Debian wiki page.

Any thoughts?

-- 
Does anybody read signatures any more?

https://charlescurley.com
https://charlescurley.com/blog/