trouble with isc dhcp 4.2.0b1

[marco perugini]

hi list!
i'm setting up this simple scenario: two dhcp servers [centOS 5.2] in 
failover mode on the same segment without anything [i mean no firewall, 
no switch..] between them.
first i tried to use the stable version which is provided with my distro 
[dhcp-3.0.5-13.el5] but that's a quite old release so i'm testing 
4.2.0b1 because of my interest in the auto-partner-down statement and 
other bug-fixes.
as you can see in my config files i had to comment the auto-partner-down 
option because it caused parsing error when the daemon starts up; did i 
set it up the wrong way?
by the way, when the server starts [without auto-partner-down statement, 
of course ;)] i can't locally connect anymore via omshell to put the 
peer in partner-down state. more precisely when i try to connect to the 
standard omapi-port i get "dhcpctl_connect: operation in progress"; i 
googled it without success :(
i know i'm boring you, readers, but i've another problem to solve, the 
last one i hope: i start both servers and they release all the 5 
addresses according to their own half of the pool. for example peer "A" 
assigns X.X.X.17, 18 and 19 while peer "B" assigns X.X.X.20 and 21; so 
the pool is over and no other client can receive address anymore. after 
that, i kill peer "B" so peer "A" keeps renewing leases of entire pool, 
as i expect. but when i turn off the client which has X.X.X.18 [lease 
issued by the peer "A"] that lease never changes his state in free, even 
though i waited for MLT+MCLT. is this behaviour normal [i use short pool 
and lease time for testing purpose]?
would i better plan a downgrade to more stable 4.1.1?
thanks in advance for every contribute and best regards..


peace, duffy




here's my configuration:

################### dhcpd.conf ###################

failover peer "duffy-dhcp-failover" {
    primary;
    mclt 120;
    split 128;
#  auto-partner-down 60;

     address 172.21.1.12;
     port 647;

     peer address 172.21.1.13;
     peer port 647;

     max-response-delay 30;
     max-unacked-updates 10;
     load balance max seconds 3;
}

include "/usr/local/etc/dhcp/pool.conf";

################### pool.conf ###################

omapi-port 7911;

authoritative;
ddns-update-style interim;
ignore client-updates;


shared-network test {
     subnet 172.21.1.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
         option routers 172.21.1.254;
         option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
         option domain-name-servers 217.19.145.193;
         allow unknown-clients;
         pool {
                 range 172.21.1.17 172.21.1.21;
                 default-lease-time 60;
                 max-lease-time 60;
                 failover peer "duffy-dhcp-failover";
                 deny dynamic bootp clients;
                 allow unknown-clients;
         }
     }
     subnet 172.27.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
     }
}
include "/usr/local/etc/dhcp/fixed.conf"

################### fixed.conf ###################

host testclient0
{
  hardware ethernet 00:1E:10:90:DD:80;
  fixed-address 172.21.1.22;
}

################## daemon output ##################

Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Server 4.2.0b1
Copyright 2004-2010 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/
/etc/dhcpd.conf line 10: invalid statement in peer declaration
    auto-partner-down