[Dnsmasq-discuss] Reading the dhcp.leases file

[Simon Kelley]

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Albert's suggestions are good, and you can't reliably read the leases
file - in gets modified by delete-and-rewrite, so if the timing is
wrong, you'll see an incomplete write.

DHCP script gets all the information needed to maintain a database
equivalent to the leases file, using whatever engine you prefer.



Cheers,

Simon.


On 12/02/17 05:53, Albert ARIBAUD wrote:
> Hi Sam,
> 
> Le Sat, 11 Feb 2017 16:06:55 -0600 Sam Weber <samweber01 at gmail.com>
> a écrit:
> 
>> In our system, when a change occurs to the DNS entries we want 
>> dnsmasq to respond to, we scan the directory of active entries
>> and then grep the dhcp.leases file to see if the entry exists
>> there.  If the entry is not found in the leases file, we omit it.
>> Once the scan and check is completed, we write a new hosts file
>> and then send SIGHUP to dnsmasq so it knows to read the new file.
>> This works well most of the time.  Sometimes, however, a
>> perfectly valid entry is not found in the dhcp.leases file so we
>> incorrectly omit the entry from the dnsmasq hosts file.  We can
>> see that the leases file gets written very often in our system,
>> and we think that sometimes we must be reading the leases file
>> whilst dnsmasq is writing it, resulting in our reading the file
>> when a value of interest has not yet been written.  Is this idea
>> of our sometimes reading an incomplete leases file a possibility?
>> Is there a workaround other than reading the leases file several
>> times?
> 
> Not sure I understand your problem right, so I'll rephrase it and
> let you tell me if that's what you do and want to happen:
> 
> - you have a list of names associated with IP addresses;
> 
> - you want to filter this list, keeping only the entries where the
> IP address is currently being leased;
> 
> - you want the filtered list to be used by dnsmasq in its name 
> resolution process.
> 
> - you want the list to be kept up to date with the current leases.
> 
> - IOW, you want DHCP clients that get an IP which appears in your 
> list one to be assigned the corresponding name in the DNS, and you 
> want the DNS to NOT map names in this list if the corresponding IP
> is not leased right now.
> 
> Is that it?
> 
> If so, /maybe/ dhcp-script is what you need or at least can help
> you detect when you need to run your update, as it would give you a
> sign that the leases just changed.
> 
> But it seems to me what you are doing is not really different from 
> what dnsmasq already does (i.e. reflexting DHCP names into the DNS)
> when the MAC-to-IP mapping is done with static leases and each
> dhcp-host line specifies a name.
> 
> If this is indeed what you are doing, then maybe you can achieve
> that with options dhcp-hostsfile and dhcp-ignore-names.
> 
> You'd use dhcp-hostsfile to point to your list written as a list
> of dhcp-host options, minus the "dhcp-host=" prefix.
> 
> You'd specify dhcp-ignore-names to make sure no host can overrule
> your list and choose its own name in its DHCP requests.
> 
> You would then only have to tell dnsmasq whenever your list changes
> by sending it SIGHUP, but you would not have to care about DHCP
> leases being granted or released, as that is automatically
> reflected in the DNS part of dnsmasq.
> 
> HTH (again, IIUC)
> 
> Amicalement,
> 
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