"Can't install new lease database"

[Simon Hobson]

Markus Zuercher wrote:

>Recently our DHCP server lost around a third of its leases in
>dhcpd.leases. I have no idea why this could happen. I found this error
>message in the log:
>
>"caps dhcpd: Can't install new lease database
>/var/db/dhcpd.leases.1272883479 to /var/db/dhcpd.leases: No such file
>or directory."

How much disk space was there at the time ?
Was there any other process running that could have removed the file ?

The server updates the disk file in two ways :
Normally, all new entries are appended to the file, no entry is ever 
modified once written. Obviously this means the file would keep 
growing and growing if there were no cleanup.

Periodically, the server writes a new file containing only the latest 
entries. It writes the new version to a new file, and only when it's 
been written does it replace the current version with the new version 
by renaming files (ie rename current->old, rename new->current).

It looks like this latter step has failed.

-- 
Simon Hobson

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