Friendly names on UI for DHCP Clients?

joyjit · Oct 22, 2020, 2:55 AM

Hi,

I am a new pfsense user (using the Protectli 6-port box), love pfsense so far.

On the DHCP Leases page: /status_dhcp_leases.php

The pfsense UI displays MAC addresses, IP Addresses and the lease status for each client.

Would be nice to be able to assign user-friendly names to each MAC address, just for UI purpose.

I understand I can do Static IP assignment and give them all unique (and fixed) hostnames, but that is a bit too much work for the simple user-friendly names display.

Is such a thing possible? (in most other consumer grade routers, this feature is present). I looked around in various places, but could not find such a feature.

How would I go about making a feature request to the development team?

Thanks

johnpoz · Oct 22, 2020, 7:16 AM

You understand you don't have to assign it an IP or name with static if you don't want too.. In your leases just click the little create static mapping button next to the entry.

Don't put in a IP, and it will get one from the pool.

Enter a description for this entry - and it will be listed in your dhcp leases table. Ie your friendly name..

joyjit · Oct 22, 2020, 2:30 PM

Hello @johnpoz thanks for your reply.

Yes, I did try this. But when I do this (i.e. I go to the Services --> DHCP Server page and add static mapping with "Client ID" and "Hostname" but NO IP Address), the DHCP leases page now shows two entries for the device:

In the upper section (where all dynamically leased devices are), it shows the device with its manufacturer assigned name, like before. There is also an IP address.

The device now also shows up in the lower section (where all the static IP addresses are listed), but with a blank IP address.

Is this to be expected?

johnpoz · Oct 22, 2020, 2:55 PM

Yeah the client still has its old lease.. Clear out the leases and let it get it via the new reservation so the description will be associated with it.

Yeah it will show up in the bottom - you made a reservation.. That is how easy they are to make, so yeah if your going to do that - might as well hand it a good name, and IP ;) hehehe

joyjit · Oct 22, 2020, 3:50 PM

@johnpoz said in Friendly names on UI for DHCP Clients?:

Yeah the client still has its old lease.. Clear out the leases and let it get it via the new reservation so the description will be associated with it.

Umm...
I restarted the client. Didn't resolve this.
I restarted the router. Still didnt resolve this.

johnpoz · Oct 22, 2020, 5:12 PM

Delete the OLD lease - not sure where users get the idea that reboot fixes everything ;)

Shutdown the client, or release the lease on the client - windows would be ipconfig /release

Make sure the old lease is gone, delete it on the pfsense side when it shows offline.

joyjit · Oct 22, 2020, 5:18 PM

@johnpoz said in Friendly names on UI for DHCP Clients?:

Delete the OLD lease - not sure where users get the idea that reboot fixes everything ;)

Shutdown the client, or release the lease on the client - windows would be ipconfig /release

Make sure the old lease is gone, delete it on the pfsense side when it shows offline.

Yes, I did that.
Powered down the client.
On pfsense UI, client shows "offline"
Delete the client from the lease.
Now power on the client.

Same problem still exists.
I think this is just an idiosyncracy with the pfSense UI. It doesnt really have a concept of a "friendly name" for a mac address.

johnpoz · Oct 22, 2020, 7:15 PM

@joyjit said in Friendly names on UI for DHCP Clients?:

It doesnt really have a concept of a "friendly name" for a mac address.

It does - its the description.. Pfsense just shows you the lease that has been handed out.. If it used the info given by your stated to hand out the lease, then it would show that description..

Hmmm - seems I can duplicate your issue here.. Where the static is created and handed out, I changed the gateway in the static, so could tell if client actually got the static I set.. But then its showing that it gave a lease vs using the static..

Hmmm...

But if you tell it to use a specific IP then it shows how it should..

I would assume that is not the expected operation - will look on redmine to see any report of this aspect of operation..

edit: Ok found this from 5 years ago when the description field was added to the leases section.. Still looking to see if anything in there about this specific scenario..
https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/5729

edit2: I don't see anything in redmine about this... But I really don't like adding stuff in there that is not warranted.. Lets see if @jimp or @Derelict has any wisdom on this.. Before we go opening up feature request or issue.. But from preliminary testing, I was able to duplicate what your seeing. And you would hope that even when I add a reservation without name or IP that that info would be used to show the lease given out for description..

joyjit · Oct 23, 2020, 3:47 PM

@johnpoz thanks for checking on redmine.

The redmine issue you posted was closed as pfsense 2.2 was not the right release for this feature request.
Is it more appropriate to create a feature request to a newer release?

Or, are you suggesting that this feature request shouldn't be entertained at all?

Or, are you suggesting this is a bug? ( you said "I would assume that is not the expected operation" )

Thanks

johnpoz · Oct 23, 2020, 4:37 PM

I was posting that as the only thing I could find even related to this issue.. Yeah its quite old, it was when they added the description field.

Your more than welcome to create an entry in redmine, call it an issue or feature request, etc. But I would really like to get chime in from someone higher up the food chain that knows pfsense better than I do for the inter workings of the dhcp leases, etc.

I wouldn't really call it bug.. Because while I personally would expect that if you create a reservation for mac abc.. And the reservation is used - it should be used to show the lease, and your "description" of said lease. But maybe that is not how it was designed to work within the limitations of how dhcpd works?

If something is working as it was designed, its not a "bug" its when something doesn't do what you thought it would do could it be considered a bug.. It should do xyz, when this happens. But sometimes when you do xyz, but also a, it doesn't do that.. Then yeah you could consider it a bug, if A was taken into account during the design. But if a was not even considered when it was designed, then no its not a bug - and what your asking for is a feature enhancement.

Your more than welcome to create an entry in redmine.. And sure I am more than happy to provide data about said issue.. Link to this thread for example in your entry. But I personally have no need or use for this feature, and works just fine for my use.. And to be honest the use case is very limited... I never understand why anyone would take the time to create a reservation, and not just assign an IP while doing said reservation. Used in that fashion - it works as designed. So maybe it was just overlooked option that was not taken into account.. Hey 1 of 100,000 users might use it this way.. Its pretty difficult to account for every possible scenario that might be encountered..

Give it a bit of time to see if anyone else chimes in.

You wanting to put a friendly name on an entry in the lease table has to be called out somehow to assign that friendly name "description" to something... Really the only thing that wouldn't change is the mac in the lease.. The lease itself will change, go away and a different lease. So really the only way to get your friendly name that I can think of is assign that friendly name to the reservation that contains the mac address. Which works - it just doesn't seem to function that way if you don't actually tell dhcpd to use specific IP in your reservation.

And your data is actually there btw.. If you filter on a mac for device ABC in your lease table.. You will see its active lease, and you will also see your reservation listing your "friendly name" its just not listed together in the lease..

stephenw10 · Oct 23, 2020, 8:01 PM

Hmm, interesting. I'm not sure I've ever attempted that. I wouldn't have expected it to be possible since I saw a 'static mapping' as being mapping an IP address to a MAC.
Seems like a bug to me. Either that it allows you create a mapping without an IP address (and without static ARP). Or that it should create a MAC alias of sorts and doesn't.

Steve

johnpoz · Oct 23, 2020, 9:08 PM

Not a static mapping, and its listed in the note below the box where you would put in an IP, that you don't enter one it will pull from the pool.

If an IPv4 address is entered, the address must be outside of the pool.
If no IPv4 address is given, one will be dynamically allocated from the pool.

I think that was actual added a while back, per a feature request for the option - I don't get the use myself either ;)

stephenw10 · Oct 23, 2020, 9:25 PM

Mmm, interesting. It's not something that ever occurred to me to try!

To be clear though you are entering that through the DHCP Static Mappings section?

But in that case, yeah, it looks like a bug. I don't expect to see it listed twice in the status.

Steve

joyjit · Oct 24, 2020, 1:09 AM

For comparison, I tried another distribution.

ahem. That one starts with "o" and rhymes with pfsense. ahem

That distribution does not have this bug. When I create a static IP mapping without any IP Address, it shows up only once, with the friendly hotsname I assigned, in the DHCP Leases page.

bingo600 · Oct 24, 2020, 5:26 AM

@johnpoz said in Friendly names on UI for DHCP Clients?:

not sure where users get the idea that reboot fixes everything ;)

Someone from Redmond - Taught them that

/Bingo

johnpoz · Oct 24, 2020, 11:13 AM

I might fire up a 2.5 snap to validate same behavior. Or can anyone else validate this behavior in 2.5?

@stephenw10 yeah I validated the behavior.. See my screenshots from above. If you create a reservation and don't put in an IP you get two entries in the lease table. Tried with hostname or not hostname as well.

I even validated that the client was pulling the reservation, by setting a different gateway in the reservation - which client correctly got via dhcp.

If you do a normal reservation where you assign IP (outside the scope) then you only get the one listing in the leases table.

If this doesn't occur in 2.5, then little reason to enter in redmine.. But if does, then more info given for the report.

kiokoman · Oct 24, 2020, 11:22 AM

2.5

johnpoz · Oct 24, 2020, 11:43 AM

So your seeing the same behavior then, where you see your lease and the reservation.. What about when you add a friendly name to the reservation.. Does that friendly name show up on the lease?

kiokoman · Oct 24, 2020, 12:07 PM

nope only on reservation

johnpoz · Oct 26, 2020, 3:45 PM

Well yeah this doesn't seem like expected or wanted behavior..

I have created this redmine
https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/11004

edit: got some traction on my entry
https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/11004#change-48989

And yeah as I expected, not really a bug.. More a feature request - because currently it is working as designed ;)

"It's actually expected because the static section is not parsed from the lease database, but pulled from the configuration. It doesn't try to correlate the two lists. So it's not a bug, but could potentially be improved in the future."