[Mageia-dev] dhclient lease files location

Thu Feb 7 10:50:53 CET 2013

'Twas brillig, and Guillaume Rousse at 07/02/13 08:37 did gyre and gimble:
+> I'm taking this out of bugzilla for larger visibility:
+> https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8391
+> 
+> Initiallly (mageia2), we had both dhcpd (the server) and dhclient (guess
+> what?) use a shared directory (/var/lib/dhcp), belonging to dhcp-common
+> package, to store their lease file. And I had this bugreport about
+> dhclient trying to store under a non-existent /var/lib/dhclient directory.
+> 
+> I modified the dhcp package as in Fedora, to have each part
+> (client/server) use their own, self-provided, state directory to store
+> their lease file: /var/lib/dhcpd and /var/lib/dhclient. I expected to
+> fix the issue, and making life easier by mimicating fedora setup.
+> 
+> Then Dave reported he now had the same error message as before, but with
+> the old directory: dhclient tries to store lease files under no more
+> existent /var/lib/dhcp directory...
+> 
+> I grepped /etc for occurences of '/var/lib/dhcp', without results. I had
+> a look in networkmanager sources, which seems to be the culprit. It once
+> used C macro NM_DHCLIENT_STATE_DIRECTORY for this purpose, but not
+> anymore. Now, according to current code, it should uses its own state
+> directory (/var/lib/NetworkManager) to store those files, but that's
+> obviously not the case. And I'm myself having lease files in both
+> directories (/var/lib/dhclient and /var/lib/dhcp).
+> 
+> I'm suspecting a mix of hardcoded or default configuration between dhcp
+> (the package), networkmanager and initscripts, but I can't figure where
+> exactly. If someone with more knowledge of those deep arcanes could
+> help, I'd be very grateful.
+
+Certainly here with my NM launched dhclient processes, it passes the
+"-lf /var/lib/dhcp/dhclient-$FOO-eth0.lease"  argument to it.
+
+
+What is also strange however is that NM doesn't build for me here. Seems
+this was due to a commit by Olav to update it to 0.9.7.995
+
+http://svnweb.mageia.org/packages?view=revision&revision=388631
+
+http://svnweb.mageia.org/packages/cauldron/networkmanager/current/SPECS/networkmanager.spec?r1=388631&r2=388630&pathrev=388631
+
+
+Interestingly the commit message is "SILENT: undo version change". Not
+quite sure what to make of that. Can you elaborate on the version change
+Olav? Perhaps I missed a mail somewhere asking for help rediffing a
+patch or something? My memory is buggy :p
+
+
+Anyway, going back to the 0.9.6.4 version (which is what is available as
+built) and I find this via a quick grep:
+
+[colin at jimmy NetworkManager-0.9.6.4]$ grep -rn --exclude=*.po "\.lease"
+ChangeLog:19635:	dhclient with "-lf /var/lib/dhcp/dhclient-%s.leases".
+src/dhcp-manager/nm-dhcp-dhclient.c:95:	return g_strdup_printf
+("%s/dhclient%s-%s-%s.lease",
+
+This uses NM_DHCLIENT_LEASE_DIR which is different to what you mentioned
+above.
+
+This appears to be the code in question:
+
+#if defined(TARGET_DEBIAN) || defined(TARGET_SUSE) ||
+defined(TARGET_MANDRIVA)
+#if defined(DHCLIENT_V3)
+#define NM_DHCLIENT_LEASE_DIR			LOCALSTATEDIR "/lib/dhcp3"
+#else
+#define NM_DHCLIENT_LEASE_DIR           LOCALSTATEDIR "/lib/dhcp"
+#endif
+#else
+#define NM_DHCLIENT_LEASE_DIR           LOCALSTATEDIR "/lib/dhclient"
+#endif
+
+
+I presume just removing the "|| defined(TARGET_MANDRIVA)" bit of the
+first #if condition should do the trick.
+
+I'd like to see what Olav had in mind with that commit first tho'. Seems
+there are a few changes in NM that will mean we have to refactor things
+a bit (it should use NMSTATEDIR in the newer code like you say and thus
+be in it's own directory).
+
+Col
+
+
+-- 
+
+Colin Guthrie
+colin(at)mageia.org
+http://colin.guthr.ie/
+
+Day Job:
+  Tribalogic Limited http://www.tribalogic.net/
+Open Source:
+  Mageia Contributor http://www.mageia.org/
+  PulseAudio Hacker http://www.pulseaudio.org/
+  Trac Hacker http://trac.edgewall.org/
+