[pkg-dhcp-devel] Bug#693566: isc-dhcp-client: the "retry" feature doesn't work

[Vincent Lefevre]

Package: isc-dhcp-client
Version: 4.2.4-3
Severity: normal

The dhclientconf(5) man page says:

  The retry statement

    retry time;

  The retry statement determines the time that must pass after the client
  has  determined  that  there  is no DHCP server present before it tries
  again to contact a DHCP server.   By default, this is five minutes.

But after my machine booted, /var/log/syslog shows concerning dhclient:

Nov 17 13:24:46 ypig dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
Nov 17 13:24:54 ypig dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 16
Nov 17 13:25:10 ypig dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 19
Nov 17 13:25:29 ypig dhclient: DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
Nov 17 13:25:40 ypig dhclient: No DHCPOFFERS received.
Nov 17 13:25:40 ypig dhclient: Unable to obtain a lease on first try.  Exiting.

i.e. dhclient exited instead of retrying after 5 minutes (and because
of that, I lost one hour to go to my lab to restart the network with
a "ifup eth0").

This bug is reproducible, even if I uncomment the retry line of the
/etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf file to have:

retry 60;

A working workaround is to set "timeout" to a huge value.

Either the "retry" feature or the documentation should be fixed.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=POSIX, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages isc-dhcp-client depends on:
ii  debianutils      4.3.4
ii  iproute          20120521-3
ii  isc-dhcp-common  4.2.4-3
ii  libc6            2.13-36

isc-dhcp-client recommends no packages.

Versions of packages isc-dhcp-client suggests:
pn  avahi-autoipd  <none>
pn  resolvconf     <none>

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf changed:
option rfc3442-classless-static-routes code 121 = array of unsigned integer 8;
send host-name = gethostname();
request subnet-mask, broadcast-address, time-offset, routers,
	domain-name, domain-name-servers, domain-search, host-name,
	netbios-name-servers, netbios-scope, interface-mtu,
	rfc3442-classless-static-routes;


-- no debconf information