[Bug 1196975] Re: ifupdown calling dhclient with -1 causes it to fail when dhcp server unavailable

[Clint Byrum]

Excerpts from Sven Mueller's message of 2013-07-02 15:43:57 UTC:
> Well, that would cover the first failure mode I described, but we experience the second one.
> I don't see any workaround, apart from removing the -1 from the dhclient options.
> 
> I'm sorry, but this means that a _part_ of my report might be invalid
> (though we think we saw that issue), but the other part is valid, unless
> you can provide instructions how to not experience this issue.
> 
> When an interface is set to use dhcp and is set to an online state,
> dhclient shouldn't give up retrying to renew a lease, but it does.
> 

I have to agree with you that dhclient should not give up trying to renew
a lease that is still valid, or trying to obtain a new one once its lease
has expired. Basically if the interface is up and configured for DHCP,
I want it to never give up trying to obtain an interface.

It seems like we're abusing -1 instead of adding a more appropriate
"try forever and stay in the foreground" mode which is I think what we
actually want from -1.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1196975

Title:
  ifupdown calling dhclient with -1 causes it to fail when dhcp server
  unavailable

Status in “ifupdown” package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  Present in the Precise version (0.7~beta2ubuntu8) at least:

  ifupdown is hardcoded to call dhclient with -1, which causes it to exit on the first failure.
  This can happen in two ways:
  1) Failure to bring up the interface if the dhcp server doesn't respond in time (default 60s).
  2) Failure to renew if the dhcp server was unavailable during a previous renewal try.

  This is http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=694541 as
  well, it seems.

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