Linux SuSE DHCP question

[jdelgado244]

We're using a Linux SuSE solution for a refurbish and reinstallation facility for some electronic equipment. As the equipment moves down the line it reaches a point where the employees plug in the unit to an ethernet cable at the desk. Usually there are 16 units being connected at a time and each time they connect they pull an IP from SuSE Linux box. Now the throughput per hour 254, and apparently the lowest time available for reseting the DHCP tables is 1 hour. This is not usually a problem as they shouldn't exceed 254 connections, but if the system is not connected properly an error condition is received for the station and they must unplug and reconnect everything again, the next time they connect they are assigned a different IP. So if they do this enough times they will in fact exceed the 254 limit for IPs. Since there is only 16 units connected at one given point, is there a way to write a script to release the previously used IPs before the hour is up? or is there a release script that can be done on the server side to release the IP?

Thanks.

 

[geirendre]

On your Suse DHCP-server you have something called default lease time
this defines how long an IP-address is "locked" when it's been assigned to an client.
Sounds like your server is set at 1 hour.
So you need to reduce this lease_time to something less, say 5 or 10 minutes.
Connected clients will automatically renew their IP-lease when half the
lease_time has passed, so setting it to 5 minuttes should work fine.

Here's how to find and adjust the lease_time on an server with GUI:

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-6180759.html

and on an non-GUI system:

http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/doc/suse/suse9.3/suselinux-adminguide_en/sec.dhcp.server.html

Remember to restart the dhcp-service to make the change active.

HTH