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chomwitt

Member

Registered: 2019-09-24

Posts: 192  

Default dhcp client floods my syslog

Devuan release: Daedalus
Installed on: PC

dpkg -l  | grep dhcp
ii  isc-dhcp-client                        4.4.3-P1-2                      amd64        DHCP client for automatically obtaining an IP address
ii  isc-dhcp-common                        4.4.3-P1-2                      amd64        common manpages relevant to all of the isc-dhcp packages

Trying to tail my /var/log/syslog i see that is constantly flooded with messages:

2023-09-16T21:06:58.845413+03:00 enous-devuan dhclient[18775]: Failed to get interface index: No such device
2023-09-16T21:06:58.845422+03:00 enous-devuan dhclient[18775]:
2023-09-16T21:06:58.845426+03:00 enous-devuan dhclient[18775]: If you think you have received this message due to a bug rather
2023-09-16T21:06:58.845430+03:00 enous-devuan dhclient[18775]: than a configuration issue please read the section on submitting
2023-09-16T21:06:58.845434+03:00 enous-devuan dhclient[18775]: bugs on either our web page at www.isc.org or in the README file
2023-09-16T21:06:58.845438+03:00 enous-devuan dhclient[18775]: before submitting a bug.  These pages explain the proper
2023-09-16T21:06:58.845441+03:00 enous-devuan dhclient[18775]: process and the information we find helpful for debugging.
2023-09-16T21:06:58.845445+03:00 enous-devuan dhclient[18775]:
2023-09-16T21:06:58.845449+03:00 enous-devuan dhclient[18775]: exiting.
2023-09-16T21:06:59.885543+03:00 enous-devuan dhclient[18786]: Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.4.3-P1
2023-09-16T21:06:59.885550+03:00 enous-devuan dhclient[18786]: Copyright 2004-2022 Internet Systems Consortium.
2023-09-16T21:06:59.885553+03:00 enous-devuan dhclient[18786]: All rights reserved.
2023-09-16T21:06:59.885556+03:00 enous-devuan dhclient[18786]: For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/

Those lines keep repating.
For now i will try to instal   udhcpc.
Interestingly udhcpc wont show any conflicts with isc-dhcp-client   . Shouldnt it?

Also i noticed that
$ update-alternatives --get-selections doenst have a dhcp entry. But couldnt have one since there are more than one dchp clients and deamons?

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Devuan(Chimaera)(Daedalus)  DS+WM: XorgX11server+StumpVM

ralph.ronnquist

Administrator

From: Battery Point, Tasmania, AUS

Registered: 2016-11-30

Posts: 1,493  

Re: Default dhcp client floods my syslog

Apparently your machine runs multiple dhclient processes competing about the interfaces.

Which networking do you use? Do you use ifupdown (which primarily is configured with /etc/network/interfaces) or something else, or several?

Geoff 42

Member

Registered: 2016-12-15

Posts: 464  

Re: Default dhcp client floods my syslog

I have spotted two copies of dhclient running after upgrading to daedalus.

I am using runit and, clearly, one copy was being started by runit but the other was less easy to track down. I came to the conclusion that one copy was started by the networking software, presumably related to /etc/network/interfaces .

The version started from runit has now been removed

update-service --remove /etc/sv/dhclient

and the VM (under Xen) where I am testing it, still boots ok with just the one copy of dhclient.

Interestingly, the runit copy was earlier complaining even more about not being able to find eth1. I then spotted that the new runit setup for dhclient had a config file in conf/interfaces which contained

INTERFACES=eth1

Changing this to eth0 soon solved that. But this is no longer in use!

Geoff

chomwitt

Member

Registered: 2019-09-24

Posts: 192  

Re: Default dhcp client floods my syslog

Its a clean netinstal installation. I did nothing out of the ordinary. Except now that i installed udchpc.

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Devuan(Chimaera)(Daedalus)  DS+WM: XorgX11server+StumpVM

ralph.ronnquist

Administrator

From: Battery Point, Tasmania, AUS

Registered: 2016-11-30

Posts: 1,493  

Re: Default dhcp client floods my syslog

Could please show your /etc/network/interfaces file?

Lorenzo

Member

Registered: 2020-03-03

Posts: 49  

Re: Default dhcp client floods my syslog

This is a bug in dhclient script shipped with runit-services package

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … ug=1033542

is fixed in testing and unstable, but stable will have to wait untill the next point release

To fix it, both methods suggested by Geoff will work

The version started from runit has now been removed

update-service --remove /etc/sv/dhclient

and the VM (under Xen) where I am testing it, still boots ok with just the one copy of dhclient.

Interestingly, the runit copy was earlier complaining even more about not being able to find eth1. I then spotted that the new runit setup for dhclient had a config file in conf/interfaces which contained

INTERFACES=eth1

Changing this to eth0 soon solved that.

basically disable the service or replace 'eth1' in /etc/sv/dhclient/conf/interfaces
with an interface that exists in your system (look at the output of ifconfig)

The commit that fix it is here
https://salsa.debian.org/Lorenzo.ru.g-g … e19d826ded

Said that, I see that this service is annoying a lot of people for several reason, I wonder if (for the future) it will be better to ship the dhclient service as disabled-by-default: opinions are welcome

Regards,
Lorenzo

Geoff 42

Member

Registered: 2016-12-15

Posts: 464  

Re: Default dhcp client floods my syslog

Thank you for looking into this, Lorenzo.

My Chimaera installation is happy without runit starting a copy of dhclient, and having removed it from Daedalus, that also seems happy. So I would think that having it disabled-by-default is probably the correct thing to do.

I am not an expert in networking so I a not sure when we would need to run a copy of dhclient from the init system.

Geoff