Keep in mind when reading and answering to this thread that I'm a total newbie :-)

Okay, on to my problem: My RedHat 7.2 box gets its IP just fine from the DHCP server, but when the lease expires I have to manually get a new one using ifup. The lease time is 1 hour, so it goes without saying that this is extremely annoying. Computers running different flavors of Windows do not have this problem.

What I'm wondering is if this is a configuration problem with my box or if it's a DHCP server problem. I don't know what kind of OS the server is running, it is out of my hands, and the administrator doesn't appear to be too good at what he does (it's a DHCP server for the students on campus, and the administrator is also a student), so all I can do for now is either look for problems on my own computer or get some answers from you guys as to what might be the problem with the DHCP server and relay that information to the guy who's in charge.

Edit: forgot to mention that ifup works every time, and I don't actually get a new IP, I get the same one as before, it just won't happen automagically like it's supposed to.

I'm not too sure I can help you, but..

The DHCP client requests a lease renewal at 1/2 lease time. So, in your case, your system should as for a renewal every 30 minutes. As I see it, either one of two things are happening. Either the DHCP server is not honoring the renewal, or your system is not requesting the renewal. Which DHCP client are you using, dhcpclient, dhcpcd, pump or ? -mk

The dhcp client daemon, dhcpcd, can be invoked from the command line. Since this is doing something weird and wiggy, I think the best way to tackle it maybe to get the lease using the dhcpcd and check the man page on it for the verbose logging option so you can just re-direct all of the mess to a log file for the duration. When the lease next kills itself off, you can tail the log to see what went kazoo.

Luck,

Finegan