Provided by: isc-dhcp-client_4.2.4-7ubuntu12.13_amd64 bug

NAME

       dhclient.conf - DHCP client configuration file

DESCRIPTION

       The  dhclient.conf  file  contains  configuration  information  for dhclient, the Internet
       Systems Consortium DHCP Client.

       The dhclient.conf file is a free-form ASCII text file.   It is parsed  by  the  recursive-
       descent  parser  built  into  dhclient.   The file may contain extra tabs and newlines for
       formatting purposes.  Keywords in the file are case-insensitive.   Comments may be  placed
       anywhere within the file (except within quotes).   Comments begin with the # character and
       end at the end of the line.

       The dhclient.conf file can be used to configure the behaviour of  the  client  in  a  wide
       variety  of  ways:  protocol  timing,  information  requested from the server, information
       required of  the  server,  defaults  to  use  if  the  server  does  not  provide  certain
       information,  values  with which to override information provided by the server, or values
       to prepend or append to information provided by the server.  The  configuration  file  can
       also be preinitialized with addresses to use on networks that don't have DHCP servers.

PROTOCOL TIMING

       The  timing  behaviour  of  the  client  need not be configured by the user.  If no timing
       configuration is provided by the user, a fairly reasonable timing behaviour will  be  used
       by default - one which results in fairly timely updates without placing an inordinate load
       on the server.

       The following statements can be used to adjust the timing behaviour of the DHCP client  if
       required, however:

       The timeout statement

       timeout time ;

       The  timeout  statement determines the amount of time that must pass between the time that
       the client begins to try to determine its address and the time that it decides  that  it's
       not  going  to  be  able  to  contact a server.   By default, this timeout is 300 seconds.
       After the timeout has passed, if there are any static leases defined in the  configuration
       file,  or any leases remaining in the lease database that have not yet expired, the client
       will loop through these leases attempting to validate them,  and  if  it  finds  one  that
       appears  to  be  valid,  it  will use that lease's address.   If there are no valid static
       leases or unexpired leases in the lease database, the client  will  restart  the  protocol
       after the defined retry interval.

       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.

       The select-timeout statement

        select-timeout time;

       It  is  possible  (some  might  say  desirable)  for there to be more than one DHCP server
       serving any given network.   In this case, it is possible that a client may be  sent  more
       than one offer in response to its initial lease discovery message.   It may be that one of
       these offers is preferable to the other (e.g., one offer may have the address  the  client
       previously used, and the other may not).

       The select-timeout is the time after the client sends its first lease discovery request at
       which it stops waiting for offers from servers, assuming that it has received at least one
       such  offer.   If no offers have been received by the time the select-timeout has expired,
       the client will accept the first offer that arrives.

       By default, the select-timeout is zero seconds - that is, the client will take  the  first
       offer it sees.

       The reboot statement

        reboot time;

       When  the client is restarted, it first tries to reacquire the last address it had.   This
       is called the INIT-REBOOT state.   If it is still attached to  the  same  network  it  was
       attached  to  when  it  last  ran,  this  is the quickest way to get started.   The reboot
       statement sets the time that must elapse after the client first tries to reacquire its old
       address  before  it gives up and tries to discover a new address.   By default, the reboot
       timeout is ten seconds.

       The backoff-cutoff statement

        backoff-cutoff time;

       The client uses an exponential backoff algorithm with some randomness,  so  that  if  many
       clients try to configure themselves at the same time, they will not make their requests in
       lockstep.   The backoff-cutoff statement determines the maximum amount of  time  that  the
       client  is allowed to back off, the actual value will be evaluated randomly between 1/2 to
       1 1/2 times the time specified.   It defaults to fifteen seconds.

       The initial-interval statement

        initial-interval time;

       The initial-interval statement sets the amount of time between the first attempt to  reach
       a  server  and  the  second  attempt  to reach a server.  Each time a message is sent, the
       interval between messages is incremented by twice the current  interval  multiplied  by  a
       random  number  between zero and one.  If it is greater than the backoff-cutoff amount, it
       is set to that amount.  It defaults to ten seconds.

       The initial-delay statement

        initial-delay time;

       initial-delay parameter  sets  the  maximum  time  client  can  wait  after  start  before
       commencing  first  transmission.  According to RFC2131 Section 4.4.1, client should wait a
       random time between startup and the actual first transmission. Previous  versions  of  ISC
       DHCP  client used to wait random time up to 5 seconds, but that was unwanted due to impact
       on startup time. As such, new versions have the default initial delay set to 0. To restore
       old behavior, please set initial-delay to 5.

LEASE REQUIREMENTS AND REQUESTS

       The  DHCP  protocol  allows  the  client  to  request  that  the  server  send it specific
       information, and not send it other information that it is not prepared  to  accept.    The
       protocol  also  allows  the  client  to  reject  offers from servers if they don't contain
       information the client needs, or if the information provided is not satisfactory.

       There is a variety of data contained in offers that DHCP servers  send  to  DHCP  clients.
       The data that can be specifically requested is what are called DHCP Options.  DHCP Options
       are defined in
        dhcp-options(5).

       The request statement

        [ also ] request [ [ option-space . ] option ] [, ... ];

       The request statement causes the client to request  that  any  server  responding  to  the
       client  send  the  client  its  values  for the specified options.   Only the option names
       should be specified in the request statement - not option parameters.    By  default,  the
       DHCPv4  client  requests the subnet-mask, broadcast-address, time-offset, routers, domain-
       name, domain-name-servers and host-name options while the DHCPv6 client requests the dhcp6
       name-servers and domain-search options.  Note that if you enter a ´request´ statement, you
       over-ride these defaults and these options will not be requested.

       In some cases, it may be desirable to send no parameter request list at all.   To do this,
       simply write the request statement but specify no parameters:

            request;

       In  most  cases,  it is desirable to simply add one option to the request list which is of
       interest to the client in question.  In this case,  it  is  best  to  ´also  request´  the
       additional options:

            also request domain-search, dhcp6.sip-servers-addresses;

       The require statement

        [ also ] require [ [ option-space . ] option ] [, ... ];

       The  require  statement  lists  options  that  must  be  sent  in order for an offer to be
       accepted.   Offers that do not contain all the listed options will be ignored.   There  is
       no default require list.

            require name-servers;

            interface eth0 {
                 also require domain-search;
            }

       The
       send
       statement

        send { [ option declaration ]
       [, ... option declaration ]}

       The send statement causes the client to send the specified options to
       the server with the specified values.  These are full option
       declarations as described in dhcp-options(5).  Options that are
       always sent in the DHCP protocol should not be specified here, except
       that the client can specify a requested dhcp-lease-time option other
       than the default requested lease time, which is two hours.  The other
       obvious use for this statement is to send information to the server
       that will allow it to differentiate between this client and other
       clients or kinds of clients.

DYNAMIC DNS

       The  client  now  has  some  very  limited  support  for doing DNS updates when a lease is
       acquired.   This is prototypical, and probably doesn't do what you want.    It  also  only
       works if you happen to have control over your DNS server, which isn't very likely.

       Note  that everything in this section is true whether you are using DHCPv4 or DHCPv6.  The
       exact same syntax is used for both.

       To make it work, you have  to  declare  a  key  and  zone  as  in  the  DHCP  server  (see
       dhcpd.conf(5) for details).   You also need to configure the fqdn option on the client, as
       follows:

         send fqdn.fqdn "grosse.fugue.com.";
         send fqdn.encoded on;
         send fqdn.server-update off;
         also request fqdn, dhcp6.fqdn;

       The fqdn.fqdn option MUST be a fully-qualified domain  name.    You  MUST  define  a  zone
       statement  for  the zone to be updated.   The fqdn.encoded option may need to be set to on
       or off, depending on the DHCP server you are using.

       The do-forward-updates statement

        do-forward-updates [ flag ] ;

       If you want to do DNS updates in the DHCP client script  (see  dhclient-script(8))  rather
       than having the DHCP client do the update directly (for example, if you want to use SIG(0)
       authentication, which is not supported directly by the DHCP client, you can  instruct  the
       client  not to do the update using the do-forward-updates statement.   Flag should be true
       if you want the DHCP client to do the update, and false if you don't want the DHCP  client
       to do the update.   By default, the DHCP client will do the DNS update.

OPTION MODIFIERS

       In  some  cases,  a  client  may  receive  option data from the server which is not really
       appropriate for that client, or may not receive information that it needs, and for which a
       useful  default value exists.   It may also receive information which is useful, but which
       needs to be supplemented with local information.   To handle these needs,  several  option
       modifiers are available.

       The default statement

        default [ option declaration ] ;

       If  for  some  option the client should use the value supplied by the server, but needs to
       use some default value if no value was supplied by the server, these values can be defined
       in the default statement.

       The supersede statement

        supersede [ option declaration ] ;

       If  for  some  option  the  client  should always use a locally-configured value or values
       rather than whatever is supplied by the  server,  these  values  can  be  defined  in  the
       supersede statement.

       The prepend statement

        prepend [ option declaration ] ;

       If  for  some  set  of  options the client should use a value you supply, and then use the
       values supplied by the server, if  any,  these  values  can  be  defined  in  the  prepend
       statement.    The prepend statement can only be used for options which allow more than one
       value to be given.   This restriction is not enforced - if you ignore  it,  the  behaviour
       will be unpredictable.

       The append statement

        append [ option declaration ] ;

       If  for some set of options the client should first use the values supplied by the server,
       if any, and then use values you  supply,  these  values  can  be  defined  in  the  append
       statement.    The  append statement can only be used for options which allow more than one
       value to be given.   This restriction is not enforced - if you ignore  it,  the  behaviour
       will be unpredictable.

LEASE DECLARATIONS

       The lease declaration

        lease { lease-declaration [ ... lease-declaration ] }

       The  DHCP client may decide after some period of time (see PROTOCOL TIMING) that it is not
       going to succeed in contacting a server.   At that time, it consults its own  database  of
       old  leases and tests each one that has not yet timed out by pinging the listed router for
       that lease to see if that lease could work.   It is possible to define one or  more  fixed
       leases  in  the  client  configuration  file  for networks where there is no DHCP or BOOTP
       service, so that the client can still automatically configure its address.   This is  done
       with the lease statement.

       NOTE:  the  lease  statement  is  also used in the dhclient.leases file in order to record
       leases that have been received from DHCP servers.   Some  of  the  syntax  for  leases  as
       described  below  is  only needed in the dhclient.leases file.   Such syntax is documented
       here for completeness.

       A lease statement consists of the lease keyword, followed by a left curly brace,  followed
       by  one  or  more  lease  declaration  statements,  followed by a right curly brace.   The
       following lease declarations are possible:

        bootp;

       The bootp statement is used to indicate that  the  lease  was  acquired  using  the  BOOTP
       protocol  rather  than  the  DHCP protocol.   It is never necessary to specify this in the
       client configuration file.   The client uses this syntax in its lease database file.

        interface "string";

       The interface lease statement is used to indicate the interface  on  which  the  lease  is
       valid.    If  set,  this  lease  will  only be tried on a particular interface.   When the
       client receives a lease from a server, it always records the interface number on which  it
       received  that  lease.   If predefined leases are specified in the dhclient.conf file, the
       interface should also be specified, although this is not required.

        fixed-address ip-address;

       The fixed-address statement is used to set the ip address of a particular lease.   This is
       required  for  all  lease  statements.   The IP address must be specified as a dotted quad
       (e.g., 12.34.56.78).

        filename "string";

       The filename statement specifies the name of the boot filename to use.   This is not  used
       by the standard client configuration script, but is included for completeness.

        server-name "string";

       The  server-name  statement  specifies  the name of the boot server name to use.   This is
       also not used by the standard client configuration script.

        option option-declaration;

       The option statement is used to specify the value of an option supplied by the server, or,
       in the case of predefined leases declared in dhclient.conf, the value that the user wishes
       the client configuration script to use if the predefined lease is used.

        script "script-name";

       The script statement is used to specify the pathname  of  the  dhcp  client  configuration
       script.   This  script  is  used  by  the  dhcp  client  to  set  each interface's initial
       configuration prior to requesting an address,  to  test  the  address  once  it  has  been
       offered,  and  to  set the interface's final configuration once a lease has been acquired.
       If no lease is acquired, the script is used to test predefined leases, if  any,  and  also
       called  once  if  no  valid lease can be identified.   For more information, see dhclient-
       script(8).

        vendor option space "name";

       The vendor option space statement is used to specify which option space should be used for
       decoding  the  vendor-encapsulate-options  option  if  one  is received.  The dhcp-vendor-
       identifier can be used to request a specific class of  vendor  options  from  the  server.
       See dhcp-options(5) for details.

        medium "media setup";

       The  medium statement can be used on systems where network interfaces cannot automatically
       determine the type of network to which they are connected.  The media setup  string  is  a
       system-dependent  parameter  which  is passed to the dhcp client configuration script when
       initializing the interface.  On Unix and Unix-like systems, the argument is passed on  the
       ifconfig command line when configuring the interface.

       The  dhcp  client  automatically  declares this parameter if it uses a media type (see the
       media statement) when configuring  the  interface  in  order  to  obtain  a  lease.   This
       statement should be used in predefined leases only if the network interface requires media
       type configuration.

        renew date;

        rebind date;

        expire date;

       The renew statement defines the time at which the  dhcp  client  should  begin  trying  to
       contact  its  server to renew a lease that it is using.   The rebind statement defines the
       time at which the dhcp client should begin to try to contact any dhcp server in  order  to
       renew  its  lease.    The  expire statement defines the time at which the dhcp client must
       stop using a lease if it has not been able to contact a server in order to renew it.

       These declarations are automatically set in leases acquired by the DHCP client,  but  must
       also  be configured in predefined leases - a predefined lease whose expiry time has passed
       will not be used by the DHCP client.

       Dates are specified in one of two ways.  The software  will  output  times  in  these  two
       formats depending on if the db-time-format configuration parameter has been set to default
       or local.

       If it is set to default, then date values appear as follows:

        <weekday> <year>/<month>/<day> <hour>:<minute>:<second>

       The weekday is present to make it easy for a human to tell when a  lease  expires  -  it's
       specified  as  a  number  from  zero  to  six,  with  zero being Sunday.  When declaring a
       predefined lease, it can always be specified as zero.  The  year  is  specified  with  the
       century,  so  it should generally be four digits except for really long leases.  The month
       is specified as a number starting with 1 for January.  The day of the  month  is  likewise
       specified  starting  with  1.   The hour is a number between 0 and 23, the minute a number
       between 0 and 59, and the second also a number between 0 and 59.

       If the db-time-format configuration was set to local,  then  the  date  values  appear  as
       follows:

        epoch      <seconds-since-epoch>;      #     <day-name>     <month-name>     <day-number>
       <hours>:<minutes>:<seconds> <year>

       The seconds-since-epoch is as according to the system's local clock (often referred to  as
       "unix  time").  The # symbol supplies a comment that describes what actual time this is as
       according to the system's configured timezone, at the time the value was written.   It  is
       provided  only  for  human  inspection,  the  epoch time is the only recommended value for
       machine inspection.

       Note that when defining a static lease, one may use either time  format  one  wishes,  and
       need not include the comment or values after it.

       If the time is infinite in duration, then the date is never instead of an actual date.

ALIAS DECLARATIONS

        alias {  declarations ... }

       Some  DHCP  clients  running  TCP/IP roaming protocols may require that in addition to the
       lease they may acquire via DHCP, their interface also be configured with a  predefined  IP
       alias  so  that  they  can  have a permanent IP address even while roaming.   The Internet
       Systems Consortium DHCP client doesn't support roaming with fixed addresses directly,  but
       in order to facilitate such experimentation, the dhcp client can be set up to configure an
       IP alias using the alias declaration.

       The alias declaration resembles a lease declaration, except that options  other  than  the
       subnet-mask  option  are  ignored  by the standard client configuration script, and expiry
       times are ignored.  A typical alias  declaration  includes  an  interface  declaration,  a
       fixed-address  declaration for the IP alias address, and a subnet-mask option declaration.
       A medium statement should never be included in an alias declaration.

OTHER DECLARATIONS

        db-time-format [ default | local ] ;

       The db-time-format option determines which of two output methods  are  used  for  printing
       times  in  leases  files.   The default format provides day-and-time in UTC, whereas local
       uses a seconds-since-epoch to store the time value, and helpfully places a local  timezone
       time  in a comment on the same line.  The formats are described in detail in this manpage,
       whithin the LEASE DECLARATIONS section.

        reject cidr-ip-address [, ... cidr-ip-address ] ;

       The reject statement causes the DHCP client to reject offers  from  servers  whose  server
       identifier matches any of the specified hosts or subnets.  This can be used to avoid being
       configured by rogue or misconfigured dhcp servers, although it should be a last  resort  -
       better to track down the bad DHCP server and fix it.

       The  cidr-ip-address  configuration  type is of the form ip-address[/prefixlen], where ip-
       address is a dotted quad IP address, and prefixlen  is  the  CIDR  prefix  length  of  the
       subnet,  counting the number of significant bits in the netmask starting from the leftmost
       end.  Example configuration syntax:

       reject 192.168.0.0/16, 10.0.0.5;

       The above example would cause offers from any server identifier in  the  entire  RFC  1918
       "Class C" network 192.168.0.0/16, or the specific single address 10.0.0.5, to be rejected.

        interface "name" { declarations ...  }

       A client with more than one network interface may require different behaviour depending on
       which interface is being configured.   All timing parameters and declarations  other  than
       lease  and  alias  declarations  can  be  enclosed  in an interface declaration, and those
       parameters will then be used only for the  interface  that  matches  the  specified  name.
       Interfaces  for  which  there is no interface declaration will use the parameters declared
       outside of any interface declaration, or the default settings.

       Note well: ISC dhclient only maintains one list of interfaces, which is either  determined
       at startup from command line arguments, or otherwise is autodetected.  If you supplied the
       list of interfaces on the command line, this  configuration  clause  will  add  the  named
       interface  to  the  list in such a way that will cause it to be configured by DHCP.  Which
       may not be the result you had intended.  This is an undesirable side effect that  will  be
       addressed in a future release.

        pseudo "name" "real-name" { declarations ...  }

       Under  some circumstances it can be useful to declare a pseudo-interface and have the DHCP
       client acquire a configuration for that interface.  Each interface that the DHCP client is
       supporting  normally has a DHCP client state machine running on it to acquire and maintain
       its lease.  A pseudo-interface is just another state  machine  running  on  the  interface
       named real-name, with its own lease and its own state.   If you use this feature, you must
       provide a client identifier for both the pseudo-interface and the  actual  interface,  and
       the  two  identifiers  must be different.   You must also provide a separate client script
       for the pseudo-interface to do what you want with the IP address.   For example:

            interface "ep0" {
                 send dhcp-client-identifier "my-client-ep0";
            }
            pseudo "secondary" "ep0" {
                 send dhcp-client-identifier "my-client-ep0-secondary";
                 script "/etc/dhclient-secondary";
            }

       The client script for the pseudo-interface should not configure the interface up or down -
       essentially,  all  it  needs  to  handle are the states where a lease has been acquired or
       renewed, and the states where a lease  has  expired.    See  dhclient-script(8)  for  more
       information.

        media "media setup" [ , "media setup", ... ];

       The  media statement defines one or more media configuration parameters which may be tried
       while attempting to acquire an IP address.   The dhcp client will cycle through each media
       setup  string  on  the  list, configuring the interface using that setup and attempting to
       boot, and then trying the next one.   This can be used for network interfaces which aren't
       capable  of  sensing  the  media type unaided - whichever media type succeeds in getting a
       request to the server and hearing the reply is probably right (no guarantees).

       The media  setup  is  only  used  for  the  initial  phase  of  address  acquisition  (the
       DHCPDISCOVER  and DHCPOFFER packets).   Once an address has been acquired, the dhcp client
       will record it in its lease database and will record the media type used  to  acquire  the
       address.   Whenever the client tries to renew the lease, it will use that same media type.
       The lease must expire before the client will go back to cycling through media types.

        hardware link-type mac-address;

       The hardware statement defines the hardware MAC address to use  for  this  interface,  for
       DHCP  servers  or relays to direct their replies.  dhclient will determine the interface's
       MAC address automatically, so use of this parameter is  not  recommended.   The  link-type
       corresponds  to  the  interface's  link  layer  type (example: ´ethernet´), while the mac-
       address is a string of colon-separated hexadecimal values for octets.

        anycast-mac link-type mac-address;

       The anycast-mac statement over-rides the all-ones broadcast MAC address dhclient will  use
       when  it  is  transmitting  packets  to the all-ones limited broadcast IPv4 address.  This
       configuration parameter is useful to reduce the number of broadcast packets transmitted by
       DHCP clients, but is only useful if you know the DHCP service(s) anycast MAC address prior
       to configuring your client.  The link-type and mac-address parameters are configured in  a
       similar manner to the hardware statement.

SAMPLE

       The  following configuration file is used on a laptop running NetBSD 1.3.   The laptop has
       an IP alias of 192.5.5.213,  and  has  one  interface,  ep0  (a  3com  3C589C).    Booting
       intervals  have  been  shortened somewhat from the default, because the client is known to
       spend most of its time on networks with little DHCP activity.   The laptop  does  roam  to
       multiple networks.

       timeout 300;
       retry 60;
       reboot 10;
       select-timeout 5;
       initial-interval 2;
       reject 192.33.137.209;

       interface "ep0" {
           send host-name "andare.fugue.com";
           hardware ethernet 00:a0:24:ab:fb:9c;
           send dhcp-client-identifier 1:0:a0:24:ab:fb:9c;
           send dhcp-lease-time 3600;
           supersede domain-search "fugue.com", "rc.vix.com", "home.vix.com";
           prepend domain-name-servers 127.0.0.1;
           request subnet-mask, broadcast-address, time-offset, routers,
                domain-name, domain-name-servers, host-name;
           require subnet-mask, domain-name-servers;
           script "CLIENTBINDIR/dhclient-script";
           media "media 10baseT/UTP", "media 10base2/BNC";
       }

       alias {
         interface "ep0";
         fixed-address 192.5.5.213;
         option subnet-mask 255.255.255.255;
       }
       This  is a very complicated dhclient.conf file - in general, yours should be much simpler.
       In many cases, it's sufficient to just create an empty dhclient.conf file -  the  defaults
       are usually fine.

SEE ALSO

       dhcp-options(5),   dhcp-eval(5),  dhclient.leases(5),  dhcpd(8),  dhcpd.conf(5),  RFC2132,
       RFC2131.

AUTHOR

       dhclient(8) was written by Ted Lemon under a contract with Vixie Labs.   Funding for  this
       project  was  provided by Internet Systems Consortium.  Information about Internet Systems
       Consortium can be found at https://www.isc.org.

                                                                                 dhclient.conf(5)