DHCP leases not for all clients

[sandman42]

Hi,

I've an installation of pfSense, actually a 2.1, who's generally working well, except for the fact that DHCP server negotiates only with some clients and not with the other.

Pratically, pf is used together with captive portal to give access to internet to internal and external wireless users; internal users are identified on the pass-trhough MAC list on the captive portal, while external use a ticket.

I've connected wireless AP to LAN and internet to WAN. On The LAN there is a DHCP server enabled with the "Deny unknown clients" unchecked.

For some clients, say smarphones, iPad, iPhones, some windows 7 32 and 64 machines, all is ok: as long as they connect to AP (there is no password for that), they negotiate an address and they can surf the internet.

Some other machines don't negotiate, even if for instance I force it with a ipconfig /renew, so they can't go on internet.

Looking at dhcpd.log, I see some human readable lines, then a lot of "@^@^@^@^@", then it ends with "^@CLOG^@^@^@^@[<f3>^@^@|<d0>^G^@^@^@^@^@"

What's wrong?

Thanks in advance

Ciao</d0></f3>

[johnpoz]

Vs looking at the logs, sniff the dhcp traffic via diagnostics, packet capture on pfsense and watch the dhcp exchange.

Normally would see
dhcpdiscover
dhcpoffer
dhcprequest
dhcpack

Where client sends broadcast and says hey any dhcp servers, dhcp server sees that and if has a lease available would send a offer.  The client then sends back the dhcprequest and says hey I want that lease, server then sends back sure here you go in the dhcpack.

There is also dhcpinform, etc.  But simple sniff of this transaction should point you to why the client is not working.. Do you not see the discover, does pfsense not send an offer back to the discover, etc. etc..

[phil.davis]

Looking at dhcpd.log, I see some human readable lines, then a lot of "@^@^@^@^@", then it ends with "^@CLOG^@^@^@^@[<f3>^@^@|<d0>^G^@^@^@^@^@"[/quote]
The logs are circular logs - maybe you are using "cat" to spit out the log at the command line, and you need to use the "clog" utility?

clog dhcpd.log
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