address pools

[Simon Hobson]

Chris Miller wrote:

>I read the docs for dhcpd.conf and I am apparently still confused.

Yes, I believe you are.

>All IP addresses are in the 10.1.2 subnet.  I want to group the device
>according to function - appliances from *.1:*.9, servers from *.10:*.19,
>workstations, printers..
>
>So, my first reaction is that I want to create address pools.  I included
>host directives in the subnet but not in the pools and when the observed
>behavior was different from the desired behavior, I tried including the host
>directives in the pools.  That apparently made no difference.
>
>Don't the known host get leases from the pool where they are known?

NO NO NO NO NO and yet again NO

A host is either known or not known, for that it matters not where 
you put the host declarations. Yet again, I repeat this advice, put 
your host declaration in the GLOBAL scope.

>   In this
>case, I want hp4100 to have an address between 100 and 109 but it get an
>address of 2 -- coincidently the first available lease in the first pool..
>Can anybody offer advice?

Yes, you need to use classes. Assign devices to classes, then use 
"allow members of ..." in the pools. Take another look at man 
dhcpd.conf and see the section on classing, then come back if there 
is anything you don't understand.


As a general network design comment, I see that you have a host 
labelled "gw1" which I'm guessing is your router. If this is your 
default router then I would strongly suggest statically configuring 
it - it's just too fundamental to the operation of your network to 
have it waiting for your dhcp server to come up - especially when you 
dhcp server will be relying on it to be there and working for it to 
start.

For the same reason, I would not consider running a dhcp server on a 
machine that wasn't statically configured for everything the dhcp 
server needs (network, default gateway, dns, and a few other).