dhclient removes current IP on interface ignoring valid lease

[Larry Brown]

>From what I've read I have been under the impression that the dhcpd
server does not respond the dhclient will go through the leases file
looking for a valid lease.  I configured the server to give out an
extremely long lease so that these clients can go without hearing from
the server.  So I am at a loss as to why dhclient isn't using the lease
in the file and running with that address in the absence of dhcpd.

The leases file is as follows:

lease {
  interface "ra0";
  fixed-address 192.168.3.2;
  option subnet-mask 255.255.0.0;
  option time-offset -1800;
  option dhcp-lease-time 842224520;
  option dhcp-message-type 5;
  option dhcp-server-identifier 192.168.3.1;
  renew 0 2023/04/16 12:41:48;
  rebind 1 2034/09/18 07:10:11;
  expire 1 2038/01/18 19:04:36;
}

The command I'm using to launch dhclient is:

dhclient -v -lf /etc/dhclient/leases -H testhost -timeout 10 -V
testClass -nw ra0

The logs when I start dhclient show the attempts and where it comes to
reading the leases file it shows:

dhclient[3978]: No DHCPOFFERS received.
dhclient[3978]: Trying recorded lease 192.168.3.2
dhclient[3978]: No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.

Is there something I'm doing wrong here?  How can I overcome this issue
when the dhcpd server goes away?  By design it will be going away as
this is definitely not a static network environment.

TIA

Larry