How to debug "Got POOLREQ, answering negatively"?

[sthaug at nethelp.no]

> I am getting this message in my dhcpd log, on the master of a failover
> pair, at seemingly random intervals:
> 
> Apr 19 09:47:14 dhcp2 dhcpd: peer dhcp1-dhcp2: Got POOLREQ, answering negatively!  Peer may be out of leases or database inconsistent.
> Apr 19 11:02:14 dhcp2 dhcpd: peer dhcp1-dhcp2: Got POOLREQ, answering negatively!  Peer may be out of leases or database inconsistent.
> Apr 19 11:47:15 dhcp2 dhcpd: peer dhcp1-dhcp2: Got POOLREQ, answering negatively!  Peer may be out of leases or database inconsistent.
> Apr 19 12:02:15 dhcp2 dhcpd: peer dhcp1-dhcp2: Got POOLREQ, answering negatively!  Peer may be out of leases or database inconsistent.
> 
> On the apparent randomness - the intervals are clearly related to a
> "max-balance 900" config setting, but they don't happen at *every*
> rebalancing of the pools.

I found my inconsistent pool, after backtracking a bit and looking at
old logs *and* old versions of dhcpd.conf. And the pool in question
was indeed inconsistent, probably due to my own mistakes.

However,

> Anybody got an idea of how to debug this? Seeing what pool it refers
> to would be a good start...

This comment still stands. If the "Got POOLREQ" message could say which
pool(s) it was referring to, it would help quite a bit!

Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug at nethelp.no