KEA DHCP missing "Register DHCP leases in DNS Resolver..."

tinfoilmatt

@SteveITS Windows Server does a lot aside from provide DHCP and DNS services. and Kea's not a router—it's a DHCP server.

Kea is also not in preview. ISC, on the other hand, is EOL.

SteveITS

@cyberconsultants said in KEA DHCP missing "Register DHCP leases in DNS Resolver...":

Kea is also not in preview

I know Kea isn't, it is in pfSense:
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/releases/23-09.html#kea-dhcp-server-feature-preview-now-available

tinfoilmatt

@SteveITS and opt-in.

Magellan

I also updated to version 2.7.1, now 2.7.2, also on the stable branch.
In the settings there a warning that ISC has reachted EOL and that the DHCP backend should be switched.
It was not visible to me that there are breaking changes here, functions that are simply omitted.
Sorry to say that. Surely this is documented somewhere, but here it is suggested that you can simply change it.
I switched back to ISC and waiting that are the function will be present for Kea.

tiny122

@noloader I can relate to this. I upgraded to 2.7.2 and then upgraded to Kea DHCP. My problem was much as you described. DHCP leases were correctly being leased as expected but didn't seem to register with the DNS resolver. Working through the settings I couldn't find anywhere in the config relating to this. I have reverted to the original ISC DHCP service and once I set the register leases with the DNS Resolver everything came back to life. Kea seems to be a bit bleeding edge to me or I have not worked out some of the settings relating to Kea. Not a clean upgrade that's for sure.

SteveITS

Limitations of the “Kea preview” are in the release notes linked above.

Agree it would be better if the note in pfSense GUI mentioned it was a preview…it’s come up in other threads but to paraphrase, “the note about ISC being deprecated is correct.”

w_bufffet

This post is deleted!

tiny122

@SteveITS Thanks for the feedback Steve, I struggle to see the value of Kea DHCP for anyone using an internal DNS resolver. Without the 2 hooked up together where DHCP registrations get registered in DNS can only be a backward step. I assume features are going to be added to Kea DHCP to support this sort of functionality before ISC DHCP is discontinued.

Gertjan

@tiny122

Exact.
Kea has very extended possibilities to act upon every DHCP related events.
A future pfSense release will use (I guess) fire up this one so it will use unbound-control in its turn to 'insert' DNS info into the resolver (unbound) without the need for unbound restarts as it was the case with ISC DHCP.

rds3

I had the same but slightly different issue when I upgraded to Kea DHCP - I was finding that it would resolve some of my devices and not others and this was very confusing. As a test, I added the default domain name (localdomain in my case) in DHCP Server setting for each network (although the text says that it would do this by default anyway and I should not have to enter it if using the default domain configured in System > General Setup > Domain Name). As soon as I applied this change, DNS resolver was able to resolve all my devices. Just thought I'd share it in case it helps anyone, although one shouldn't need to do this and is a workaround at best. Looking forward to seeing this fixed and the option to register DHCP leases being made available in the next release.

frankz

@noloader Hi, I have the same need as yours. Is there a way to make a rolback for isc?

johnpoz

@frankz said in KEA DHCP missing "Register DHCP leases in DNS Resolver...":

Is there a way to make a rolback for isc?

Click use ISC where you changed it to use KEA

frankz

@Johnpoz Thank you , I had focused on the menu of the dhcp server .!!!!! Thank you .

manny.tew

the fact that Kea DCHP doesn't have this feature is a deal breaker. I too have reverted to ISC.

I wish this lack had been communicated better that this feature was missing. It was very disruptive to many as they didn't know what was causing DNS to fail.

The deprecation warning should have mentioned Kea isn't at parity with ISC.

johnpoz

@manny-tew said in KEA DHCP missing "Register DHCP leases in DNS Resolver...":

I wish this lack had been communicated better that this feature was missing

You mean like in the release notes that goes over what is not working yet.. With the big Warning box ;)

https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/releases/2-7-1.html#rn-2-7-1-kea
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/releases/23-09.html#rn-23-09-kea

And also notice in the same place tells you how to just switch back there at the bottom, etc..

noloader

@johnpoz said in KEA DHCP missing "Register DHCP leases in DNS Resolver...":

I wish this lack had been communicated better that this feature was missing
You mean like in the release notes that goes over what is not working yet.. With the big Warning box ;)

A small nit... The GUI does not provide the information before, during or after an upgrade. And there is no link to the release notes document.

On the Home page, there's just a "Version X.X.X is available," with a little cloud (download) button to click. On the System Updates page, there's just a version number and confirm button to click.

So I think it is fair to say "better communicated" since no communication is going on at the moment for those who are upgrading using the GUI.

SteveITS

@noloader I understand your point and don't disagree about Kea, but your example is for pfSense itself and upgrading that doesn't change the DHCP server in use. I would say the page to change DHCP servers needs the warning/link. For versions, I think it's assumed people read the release notes as those cover other breaking changes, e.g. OpenSSL/OpenVPN.

noloader

@SteveITS said in KEA DHCP missing "Register DHCP leases in DNS Resolver...":

For versions, I think it's assumed people read the release notes as those cover other breaking changes

Actually, no. I did not know there was a official document maintained until this thread.

But then again, I probably would not have read it since I'm on a Stable branch, and not an Experimental branch. I expect Stable to be stable.

manny.tew

@johnpoz Thank you for correcting me. Reading the warning however, I'm not sure I would have connected what it meant. As developers we consider warnings (wrongfully) as something to address 'soon' ...NOT something that is actually breaking functionality.

Perhaps the whole warning box being on the Advanced Networking page (system_advanced_network.php) would have helped?

The sentence there now which says "ISC DHCP has reached end-of-life and will be removed from a future version of Netgate pfSense Plus. Kea DHCP is the newer, modern DHCP distribution from ISC that includes the most-requested features." encouraged me to switch without reading the release notes as I never imagined that Netagate would deprecate it without feature parity.

A link to the docs/release notes directly from that sentence above would be good to consider. Secondly, just as ISC DHCP now has (deprecated), perhaps Kea DHCP should have Kea DHCP (Opt-in Preview). If it did, it would have encouraged me to investigate etc. before jumping in.

PS: also, the system should have known that I have a feature enabled that Kea doesn't support. A quick config check should have put a warning that DNS will break.

johnpoz

I am not saying it couldn't of done better or worded different. What I am saying is the info was provided, the problem is users rarely actually read release notes.

A quick config check should have put a warning that DNS will break.

That would be slick to be honest.. But that seems like a large amount of extra coding for something that is "preview"

I would rather the developers spend time on actual implementation of final product, vs working on code to check if user is using something that is not yet enabled ;)