Restarting DHCP safely whilst avoiding partner-down state

[Chuck Anderson]

On Fri, May 13, 2016 at 03:23:25PM +0100, Terry Burton wrote:
> On 13 May 2016 at 14:22, Chuck Anderson <cra at wpi.edu> wrote:
> > I don't know if a corrupted lease file would cause a failure to start
> > the dhcp server, or if it would just go unnoticed, perhaps with a log
> > message.  But like I said, we've never had a failure to start the
> > server that was caused by a lease file issue.
> 
> In our experience leases files corrupted by other means can cause a
> failure to start. I don't recall whether that was due to mere
> truncation though...

There is also the -T parameter to test the lease file:

       The -T flag can be used to test the lease database file in a similar way.

It might be a good idea to also use this test before restarting.
While it won't fix a corrupted lease file, it may prevent you from
losing all DHCP service due to a failure to restart.