[intrepid, hardy] Can't get DHCP offer without rebooting the OS

have a look on: Bug #262817

I can also confirm similar behaviour on my machine. I cannot enumerate the conditions required to set off this bug however it is very annoying. This happens only on my ethernet connection.

neville@neville-laptop:~$ sudo dhclient eth0
[sudo] password for neville:
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.1.1
Copyright 2004-2008 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/

wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
Listening on LPF/eth0/00:1c:25:95:69:39
Sending on LPF/eth0/00:1c:25:95:69:39
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 5
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 18
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 19
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 9
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 2
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.
neville@neville-laptop:~$ ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1c:25:95:69:39
          inet6 addr: fe80::21c:25ff:fe95:6939/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
          RX packets:39 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:53 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
          RX bytes:5232 (5.2 KB) TX bytes:14147 (14.1 KB)
          Memory:fc000000-fc020000

eth0:avahi Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1c:25:95:69:39
          inet addr:169.254.4.231 Bcast:169.254.255.255 Mask:255.255.0.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
          Memory:fc000000-fc020000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
          RX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:752 (752.0 B) TX bytes:752 (752.0 B)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:21:5d:4e:12:00
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

wmaster0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-21-5D-4E-12-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

neville@neville-laptop:~$

After diagnosing the problem with a network engineer it appears that some routing software with in built dhcp server BANS specific mac addresses for a number of minutes if too many dhcp discovers are sent. Apparently dhclient sends on the wire too many dhcp offers for this particular brand of router.

@Neville
Is there a router firmware that can solve this?

Regards
chuck

It seems like an issue with the router. Unfortunately I do not have
jurisdiction over the router so I couldn't answer your question. Having
dhclient "bombard" the router with DHCP discovers does not help however.

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 1:45 PM, Chuck Short <email address hidden>wrote:

> @Neville
> Is there a router firmware that can solve this?
>
> Regards
> chuck
>
> ** Changed in: dhcp3 (Ubuntu)
> Importance: Undecided => Low
>
> ** Changed in: dhcp3 (Ubuntu)
> Status: New => Triaged
>
> --
> [intrepid, hardy] Can't get DHCP offer without rebooting the OS
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/290489
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in “dhcp3” package in Ubuntu: Triaged
>
> Bug description:
> Hi there,
>
> I have a problem with getting DHCP offer after changing network settings
> from static to dhcp (or vice versa).
>
> /etc/network/interface file:
> iface eth0 inet dhcp --> iface eth0 inet static
> or
> iface eth0 inet static --> iface eth0 inet dhcp
>
> You can find all my console attempts to get it working in attachment file
> below (pay attention only to eth0, not wlan0 which was down).
>
> After changing /etc/network/interface file I tried (many times) for
> example:
> $ /etc/init.d/networking stop
> $ /etc/init.d/networking start
> $ /etc/init.d/networking restart
> $ ifdown eth0
> $ ifup eth0
> $ rm /var/run/dhclient*
> $ killall -9 -r dhclient*
> $ ifconfig eth0 down
> $ ifconfig eth0 up
> $ dhclient eth0
>
> ..but I was not successful at all until rebooting the whole OS. After that,
> everything worked fine again (dhclient etc.).
>
> Thanks in advance, Vojtech Vitek [V-Teq].
>

--
Regards,
Neville Grech