DHCP and Printers

[Diego, Emil]

Thanks for the quick response David & Simon.  Since it's both HP Jet
Direct and Lanier printers that are giving me this problem I run with
both solutions at once.  I'll start updating the bios on the HP Jet
Direct printer and I will start analyzing the network packets between
the DHCP and the Lanier printers.  

The only thing is that I'm not too familiar with the data packets that
DHCP uses to communicate.  Does anyone know of a good reference that
shows the information layout of the packets? 


-----Original Message-----
From: dhcp-users-bounce at isc.org [mailto:dhcp-users-bounce at isc.org] On
Behalf Of Simon Hobson
Sent: Tuesday, December 12, 2006 3:01 PM
To: dhcp-users at isc.org
Subject: Re: DHCP and Printers

Diego, Emil wrote:
>I am running DHCP 3.0.5 on fedora core 4.  I have about 30 network 
>printers ranging from HP JetDirect boxes to Lanier printers.  I have 
>setup the DHCP server to assign an IP address to the printer, but I am 
>running into a problem.  It seems that some of the printers never 
>acknowledge the IP sent to them from the DHCP server and then tries to 
>request the ip over and over again.
>
>Here is some of the dhcp server log for the MAC address of one of my 
>printers.
>Dec 11 10:55:22 moya dhcpd: DHCPDISCOVER from 00:00:74:b2:53:64 via 
>eth0 Dec 11 10:55:22 moya dhcpd: DHCPOFFER on 10.39.5.53 to 
>00:00:74:b2:53:64 via eth0 Dec 11 10:55:24 moya dhcpd: DHCPDISCOVER 
>from 00:00:74:b2:53:64 via eth0 Dec 11 10:55:24 moya dhcpd: DHCPOFFER 
>on 10.39.5.53 to 00:00:74:b2:53:64 via eth0

It's impossible to tell - if only you could look at the non existent
logs in the printer and see what reason it gives :-(

First thing would be to analyse the packets and see what options the
printer requests - and make sure you supply everything it asks for. 
Beyond that it's guesswork !

I once had a printer (RIP attached to a Minolta copier) that didn't
request the subnet mask, but even when I hard coded the options list for
that device it still didn't accept a lease offer. It was a few years
later (well after I'd given up and manually configured it) that I
accidentally found a tech note that it won't accept a lease shorter than
two years - yes TWO YEARS ! You have to wonder what some people are
thinking ? Of all the things I'd considered, I'd never thought of that.