Cleanup leases?
Simon Hobson
dhcp1 at thehobsons.co.uk
Thu Sep 28 18:35:09 UTC 2006
Jeff A. Earickson wrote:
>And we use
>Retrospect
>(http://www.emcinsignia.com/products/homeandoffice/retroformacintosh/)
>to backup our Mac office clients. Retrospect really (stupidly!)
>expects IP numbers not to change for backup clients.
No it doesn't.
> Since we
>don't want to use static/bootp addresses for hundreds of Mac
>clients, a long lease time is in our favor. We consider Retrospect's
>keying in on IP numbers to be a defect in their product, BTW.
It isn't a defect as it has no such limitation UNLESS YOU CONFIGURE
IT THAT WAY. In other words, you CAN make it a pain, but it isn't the
default.
I have a good idea what the problem is - you are doing backups across
subnets, and have disabled directed broadcasts in the routers. This
means that Retrospect cannot broadcast to find clients that aren't on
the local subnet and so you have to add them by IP address - at which
point it DOES require the client to stay at that address.
Try a Google search for "retrospect broadcast subnet", in particular
this article caught my eye :
http://list.dantz.com/pipermail/retro-talk/2005-February/008875.html
What this guy has done is to tell Retrospect that there is a subnet
at a.b.c.d/255.255.255.255 where a.b.c.d is the IP address of the
client. This means that Retrospect will broadcast to a.b.c.d to find
any clients on the subnet - and of course in this case there can be
only one. Because as a network packet, this broadcast is not really a
broadcast, the routers allow it through.
If the client changes, all the admin has to do is add a broadcast
subnet for the new address and the client will be found. The
alternative of adding by IP address means removing the client from
the server config ("Forget client" in Retrospect terminology) and
adding it in again - that IS a right royal PITA.
This workaround isn't a proper answer, but it will make things work
until you get the router configs fixed - enable directed broadcasts.
Now your network admins will probably scream at you and absolutely
refuse to support satanistic features such as directed broadcasts. If
they do then give them that pitying look and simply ask if they
haven't heard of access control lists ? And would they like mummy or
daddy to show them ?
OK, that's perhaps a bit too far, but I think you get the idea ! They
may not want to allow directed broadcasts (it's a good way of making
lots of network traffic remotely), but they should be able to allow
it from your backup server(s) or admin subnet. This is all that
Retrospect needs in order to work across subnets and NOT find clients
by IP address.
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