[Dnsmasq-discuss] DCHP server not assign IP addresses

[Rune Kock]

On Tue, Nov 18, 2008 at 00:05, Troy Piggins <troy at piggo.com> wrote:
> My dnsmasq 2.41 doesn't seem to be assigning DHCP IP addresses.
> Been running the server for some time, but mainly for the DNS
> side of things.  The IP addresses for most machines on my network
> are static, so hasn't been a problem.  But I'm trying to connect
> to a NAS (WD My Book World Edition) which I believe needs a DHCP
> server to get an IP address, and I can't interface with it to set
> it up without one.
>
> [...]
>
> Any ideas?

1) Check dnsmasq's entries in syslog: does it show any DHCP activity?

2) Check your firewall settings.  The following is from dnsmasq's FAQ:

   The first thing to check is the broadcast address set for the
   ethernet interface. This is normally the adddress on the connected
   network with all ones in the host part. For instance if the
   address of the ethernet interface is 192.168.55.7 and the netmask
   is 255.255.255.0 then the broadcast address should be
   192.168.55.255. Having a broadcast address which is not on the
   network to which the interface is connected kills things stone
   dead.

   The second potential problem relates to firewall rules: since the ISC
   daemon in some configurations bypasses the kernel firewall rules
   entirely, the ability to run the ISC daemon does not indicate
   that the current configuration is OK for the dnsmasq daemon.
   For the dnsmasq daemon to operate it's vital that UDP packets to
   and from ports 67 and 68 and broadcast packets with source
   address 0.0.0.0 and destination address 255.255.255.255 are not
   dropped by iptables/ipchains.