NAME
dhcpd.leases - DHCP client lease database
DESCRIPTION
The Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Server keeps a persistent database of
leases that it has assigned. This database is a free-form ASCII file
containing a series of lease declarations. Every time a lease is acquired,
renewed or released, its new value is recorded at the end of the lease file.
So if more than one declaration appears for a given lease, the last one in the
file is the current one.
When dhcpd is first installed, there is no lease database. However, dhcpd
requires that a lease database be present before it will start. To make the
initial lease database, just create an empty file called DBDIR/dhcpd.leases.
You can do this with:
touch DBDIR/dhcpd.leases
In order to prevent the lease database from growing without bound, the file is
rewritten from time to time. First, a temporary lease database is created and
all known leases are dumped to it. Then, the old lease database is renamed
DBDIR/dhcpd.leases~. Finally, the newly written lease database is moved into
place.
In order to process both DHCPv4 and DHCPv6 messages you will need to run two
separate instances of the dhcpd process. Each of these instances will need
it's own lease file. You can use the
-lf option on the server's command
line to specify a different lease file name for one or both servers.
FORMAT
Lease descriptions are stored in a format that is parsed by the same recursive
descent parser used to read the
dhcpd.conf(5) and
dhclient.conf(5) files. Lease files can contain lease declarations, and
also group and subgroup declarations, host declarations and failover state
declarations. Group, subgroup and host declarations are used to record objects
created using the OMAPI protocol.
The lease file is a log-structured file - whenever a lease changes, the contents
of that lease are written to the end of the file. This means that it is
entirely possible and quite reasonable for there to be two or more
declarations of the same lease in the lease file at the same time. In that
case, the instance of that particular lease that appears last in the file is
the one that is in effect.
Group, subgroup and host declarations in the lease file are handled in the same
manner, except that if any of these objects are deleted, a
rubout is
written to the lease file. This is just the same declaration, with
{
deleted; } in the scope of the declaration. When the lease file is
rewritten, any such rubouts that can be eliminated are eliminated. It is
possible to delete a declaration in the
dhcpd.conf file; in this case,
the rubout can never be eliminated from the
dhcpd.leases file.
COMMON STATEMENTS FOR LEASE DECLARATIONS
While the lease file formats for DHCPv4 and DHCPv6 are different they share many
common statements and structures. This section describes the common statements
while the succeeding sections describe the protocol specific statements.
Dates
A
date is specified in two ways, depending on the configuration value for
the
db-time-format parameter. If it was set to
default, then the
date fields appear as follows:
weekday year/month/day
hour:minute:second
The weekday is present to make it easy for a human to tell when a lease expires
- it's specified as a number from zero to six, with zero being Sunday. The day
of week is ignored on input. The year is specified with the century, so it
should generally be four digits except for really long leases. The month is
specified as a number starting with 1 for January. The day of the month is
likewise specified starting with 1. The hour is a number between 0 and 23, the
minute a number between 0 and 59, and the second also a number between 0 and
59.
Lease times are specified in Universal Coordinated Time (UTC), not in the local
time zone. There is probably nowhere in the world where the times recorded on
a lease are always the same as wall clock times. On most unix machines, you
can display the current time in UTC by typing
date -u.
If the
db-time-format was configured to
local, then the
date fields appear as follows:
epoch <seconds-since-epoch>; # <day-name>
<month-name> <day-number>
<hours>:<minutes> :<seconds>
<year>
The
seconds-since-epoch is as according to the system's local clock
(often referred to as "unix time"). The
# symbol supplies a
comment that describes what actual time this is as according to the system's
configured timezone, at the time the value was written. It is provided only
for human inspection.
If a lease will never expire,
date is
never instead of an actual
date.
General Variables
As part of the processing of a lease information may be attached to the lease
structure, for example the DDNS information or if you specify a variable in
your configuration file. Some of these, like the DDNS information, have
specific descriptions below. For others, such as any you might define, a
generic line of the following will be included.
set variable = value;
The
set statement sets the value of a variable on the lease. For general
information on variables, see the
dhcp-eval(5) manual page.
DDNS Variables
The ddns-text and ddns-dhcid variables
These variables are used to record the value of the client's identification
record when the server has updated DNS for a particular lease. The text
record is used with the interim DDNS update style while the dhcid record
is used for the standard DDNS update style.
The ddns-fwd-name variable
This variable records the value of the name used in
updating the client's A record if a DDNS update has been successfully
done by the server. The server may also have used this name to
update the client's PTR record.
The ddns-client-fqdn variable
If the server is configured both to use the interim or standard DDNS update
style, and to allow clients to update their own FQDNs, then if the
client did in fact update its own FQDN, the
ddns-client-fqdn variable records the name that the client has
indicated it is using. This is the name that the server will have
used to update the client's PTR record in this case.
The ddns-rev-name variable
If the server successfully updates the client's PTR record, this
variable will record the name that the DHCP server used for the PTR
record. The name to which the PTR record points will be either the
ddns-fwd-name or the ddns-client-fqdn.
Executable Statements
on events { statements... }
The on statement records a list of statements to execute if a
certain event occurs. The possible events that can occur for an
active lease are release and expiry. More than one event
can be specified - if so, the events are separated by '|' characters.
THE DHCPv4 LEASE DECLARATION
lease ip-address { statements... }
Each lease declaration includes the single IP address that has been leased to
the client. The statements within the braces define the duration of the lease
and to whom it is assigned.
starts date;
ends date;
tstp date;
tsfp date;
atsfp date;
cltt date;
The start and end time of a lease are recorded using the
starts and
ends statements. The
tstp statement is present if the failover
protocol is being used, and indicates what time the peer has been told the
lease expires. The
tsfp statement is also present if the failover
protocol is being used, and indicates the lease expiry time that the peer has
acknowledged. The
atsfp statement is the actual time sent from the
failover partner. The
cltt statement is the client's last transaction
time.
See the description of dates in the section on common structures.
hardware hardware-type mac-address;
The hardware statement records the MAC address of the network interface on which
the lease will be used. It is specified as a series of hexadecimal octets,
separated by colons.
uid client-identifier;
The
uid statement records the client identifier used by the client to
acquire the lease. Clients are not required to send client identifiers, and
this statement only appears if the client did in fact send one. Client
identifiers are normally an ARP type (1 for ethernet) followed by the MAC
address, just like in the
hardware statement, but this is not
required.
The client identifier is recorded as a colon-separated hexadecimal list or as a
quoted string. If it is recorded as a quoted string and it contains one or
more non-printable characters, those characters are represented as octal
escapes - a backslash character followed by three octal digits.
client-hostname hostname ;
Most DHCP clients will send their hostname in the
host-name option. If a
client sends its hostname in this way, the hostname is recorded on the lease
with a
client-hostname statement. This is not required by the protocol,
however, so many specialized DHCP clients do not send a host-name option.
binding state state;
next binding state state;
The
binding state statement declares the lease's binding state. When the
DHCP server is not configured to use the failover protocol, a lease's binding
state may be
active,
free or
abandoned. The failover
protocol adds some additional transitional states, as well as the
backup state, which indicates that the lease is available for
allocation by the failover secondary. Please see the
dhcpd.conf(5)
manual page for more information about abandoned leases.
The
next binding state statement indicates what state the lease will move
to when the current state expires. The time when the current state expires is
specified in the
ends statement.
rewind binding state state;
This statement is part of an optimization for use with failover. This helps a
server rewind a lease to the state most recently transmitted to its peer.
option agent.circuit-id string;
option agent.remote-id string;
These statements are used to record the circuit ID and remote ID options sent by
the relay agent, if the relay agent uses the
relay agent information
option. This allows these options to be used consistently in conditional
evaluations even when the client is contacting the server directly rather than
through its relay agent.
The vendor-class-identifier variable
The server retains the client-supplied Vendor Class Identifier option for
informational purposes, and to render them in DHCPLEASEQUERY responses.
bootp;
reserved;
If present, they indicate that the BOOTP and RESERVED failover flags
(respectively) should be set. BOOTP and RESERVED dynamic leases are treated
differently than normal dynamic leases, as they may only be used by the client
to which they are currently allocated.
Other Additional options or executable statements may be included, see
the description of them in the section on common structures.
THE DHCPv6 LEASE (IA) DECLARATION
ia_ta IAID_DUID { statements... }
ia_na IAID_DUID { statements... }
ia_pd IAID_DUID { statements... }
Each lease declaration starts with a tag indicating the type of the lease. ia_ta
is for temporary addresses, ia_na is for non-temporary addresses and ia_pd is
for prefix delegation. Following this tag is the combined IAID and DUID from
the client for this lease.
The IAID_DUID value is recorded as a colon-separated hexadecimal list or as a
quoted string. If it is recorded as a quoted string and it contains one or
more non-printable characters, those characters are represented as octal
escapes - a backslash character followed by three octal digits.
cltt date;
The
cltt statement is the client's last transaction time.
See the description of dates in the section on common structures.
iaaddr ipv6-address { statements... }
iaprefix ipv6-address/prefix-length { statements... }
Within a given lease there can be multiple iaaddr and iaprefix statements.
Each will have either an IPv6 address or an IPv6 prefix (an address and
a prefix length indicating a CIDR style block of addresses). The following
statements may occur Within each iaaddr or iaprefix.
binding state state;
The binding state statement declares the lease's binding state.
In DHCPv6 you will normally see this as active or expired.
preferred-life lifetime;
The IPv6 preferred lifetime associated with this address, in seconds.
max-life lifetime;
The valid lifetime associated with this address, in seconds.
ends date;
The end time of the lease. See the description of dates in the section on
common structures.
Additional options or executable statements may be included. See the description
of them in the section on common structures.
THE FAILOVER PEER STATE DECLARATION
The state of any failover peering arrangements is also recorded in the lease
file, using the
failover peer statement:
failover peer name state {
my state state at date;
peer state state at date;
}
The states of the peer named
name is being recorded. Both the state of
the running server (
my state) and the other failover partner (
peer
state) are recorded. The following states are possible:
unknown-state,
partner-down,
normal,
communications-interrupted,
resolution-interrupted,
potential-conflict,
recover,
recover-done,
shutdown,
paused, and
startup.
FILES
DBDIR/dhcpd.leases DBDIR/dhcpd.leases~
SEE ALSO
dhcpd(8), dhcp-options(5), dhcp-eval(5), dhcpd.conf(5), RFC2132, RFC2131.
AUTHOR
dhcpd(8) is maintained by ISC. Information about Internet Systems
Consortium can be found at:
https://www.isc.org/