Kea DHCP not assigning addresses
-
Hello! I've been running pfSense on a custom box with Intel NICs for about 3 years now with no issues, but recently (after the switch to Kea DHCP, I guess?) i've started to notice that addresses aren't being assigned past a point. If I clear all DHCP leases it will start working correctly and then start logging ALLOC_V4_ENGINE_ALLOC_FAIL messages after a few devices receive leases despite the pool of addresses being nowhere close to full.
Any ideas on how to fix this? I've been trying to diagnose this for the last few days and have had no real success past temporary patch jobs by clearing leases for DHCP devices. Local name resolution also appears to have stopped working... but that's not critical for right now.
-
Why do you have "Ignore Client Identifiers" checked? While that doesn't have any obvious connection to your problem, I'm suspicious of it because it's a nonstandard and probably poorly-tested option.
-
@aristehney Realistically, just switch back and use Kea when it’s out of “preview.”
-
@SteveITS said in Kea DHCP not assigning addresses:
Realistically, just switch back and use Kea when it’s out of “preview.”
Oh really? They're not doing newbies any favors by labeling ISC DHCPD as "Deprecated" while not labeling Kea as "Alpha-quality". I'm new to this platform, and I selected Kea while setting up my router last week because the menu made it sound like that was the most reasonable choice. I've had enough trouble with Kea already that I'm not exactly surprised to hear that it's not thought to be release-quality ... but I feel misled.
What happens if I just switch the "Server Backend" choice back to ISC? Do I lose my DHCP-related configuration settings? What about the lease database?
-
@tgl You’re far from the first. :-/
AFAIK it copies the settings back. I can’t recall if I changed anything during the short period I had it active.
Info: https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/releases/2-7-1.html#kea-dhcp-server-feature-preview-now-available
-
Regarding local name resolution: https://forum.netgate.com/post/1156966
If I add the 2 missing entries back, and restart
unbound, local hostname resolution works again. -
@tgl said in Kea DHCP not assigning addresses:
Why do you have "Ignore Client Identifiers" checked? While that doesn't have any obvious connection to your problem, I'm suspicious of it because it's a nonstandard and probably poorly-tested option.
kea ALLOC_V4_ENGINE_ALLOC_FAIL and read the first link, and several answers.
-
@tgl said in Kea DHCP not assigning addresses:
What happens if I just switch the "Server Backend" choice back to ISC? Do I lose my DHCP-related configuration settings? What about the lease database?
For the next person interested: I just switched to ISC (by flipping the radio buttons under System/Advanced/Networking), and I find that it kept all of the major DHCP settings such as lease ranges, but it just threw away the lease database. The latter's pretty unsurprising I guess given that the storage is completely different. I expect my clients will ask for their existing addresses and ISC DHCPD should grant the requests, so it should be all OK once the dust settles.
I don't have any statically-mapped DHCP addresses, so I can't say whether those would have been preserved. Also, it's worth taking a look at the DHCP configuration page(s) after you switch, because it seems like there's a few minor options that ISC has and Kea does not.
