How can one run several dhcpd on a single machine?

[Glenn Satchell]

>Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 14:50:17 +0800
>From: michael kapelko <kornerr at gmail.com>
>
>I decided to use several dhcpd servers on a single machine each for
>certain set of subnets. But I can't launche more than one dhcpd
>process.
>How to do it?
>Thanks.

> Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2009 15:27:52 +0800
> From: michael kapelko <kornerr at gmail.com>
> 
> I should have specified different lease and pid files.

Hi Michael

If you are doing it because you have several independant groups you
wish to provide dhcp services for then you could use a master
dhcpd.conf with separate include file for each group. Give the admins
for the particular group access to their include file. Then have an
automatic restart cron job that checks for updated conf files, performs
a syntax check and restarts dhcpd. Run it as often as you see fit.

Otherwise, as you say you need a different lease file, pid file and
interface to listen on.

Normal best practise is to run a single instance. There are sites
running dhcpd with >100k leases, so size or scalability should not be
an issue. Setting per subnet options is also completely possible.

Perhaps if you let us know why you want to do this we may be able to
offer other ways to achieve what you want.

regards,
-glenn