After configuring /etc/dhcp.conf and making sure that /var/lib/dhcp/dhcpd.leases is available on my Fedora Core 4 box , i'm trying to start the dhcp server , but i'm getting this message:

[root@FEDORA etc]# dhcpd
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Server V3.0.2-RedHat
Copyright 2004 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/
Wrote 0 deleted host decls to leases file.
Wrote 0 new dynamic host decls to leases file.
Wrote 0 leases to leases file.

No subnet declaration for eth0 (172.28.1.101).
** Ignoring requests on eth0. If this is not what
you want, please write a subnet declaration
in your dhcpd.conf file for the network segment
to which interface eth0 is attached. **

Not configured to listen on any interfaces!

who can i configure the server to listen to the interface i want. i have eth0 and wlan0 interfaces on this box. i looked carefully in dhcp man pages but found nothing. thanks ......

Post your dhcp.conf file so we can tell what is wrong.

ddns-update-style interim;
ignore client-updates;

subnet 192.168.2.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {

option routers 192.168.2.1;
option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;

option nis-domain "dream.net";
option domain-name "dream.net";
option domain-name-servers 192.168.2.2;

option time-offset -18000; # Eastern Standard Time

range dynamic-bootp 192.168.2.5 192.168.2.221;
range dynamic-bootp 192.168.2.223 192.168.2.254;
default-lease-time 21600;
max-lease-time 43200;

host ns {
next-server marvin.redhat.com;
hardware ethernet 12:34:56:78:AB:CD;
fixed-address 207.175.42.254;
}
}

the DHCP server's ip address is 192.168.2.222/24

I wanted to piggy back on this question, I just installed Gentoo and I wanted to know how to decrease the amount of time that dhcpd takes to get an IP address. The file /etc/dhcp.conf doesn't exist.

The DHCP server will hand out leases on any interface whose IP address resides on a subnet declaration defined in dhcpd.conf.

It looks like your interface eth0 has IP: 172.28.1.101. Is this correct? If so you need to change the interfaces IP address to 192.168.2.222. If this is not correct what is the IP address of your wlan0 interface? You can use "DHCPDARGS=" to set the listening IP address. ex: "DHCPDARGS=eth0 wlan0" will make dhcpd listen on eth0 and wlan0 for dhcp requests provided that they both have subnet declarations in the dhcpd.conf file

You do not need dhcp.conf in Gentoo, you only need /etc/dhcp/dhcpd.conf. You will also need to edit /etc/conf.d/dhcp to include your listening interfaces. The only reason for delay in obtaining a lease that I can think of is the fact that dhcpd pings the IP address before handing out an IP address. You can either disable this (not advised), or set a static DHCP lease to receive a lease quicker.

I hope this helps.

I wasn't clear enough, I have my wireless adapter set to automatically start on boot with dhcp. As an experiment, I wanted to test how long it takes to stop searching for an IP and continue the boot-up process. Sometimes I go places that don't have wireless available and I would like to boot up quickly and not have to wait 2-3 minutes for eth1 to find an IP address. So, is there a way to make my machine continue to boot while it searches for an IP in the background or set a time limit to cut down on the wait time?

thanks for the DHCPDARGS=eth0 line ... i guess if i didn't have two cards in this machine i wouldn't have needed to update that. but this line should be edited in /etc/sysconifg/dhcpd not in /etc/dhcpd.conf
this was the way it worked for me at least.. thanks a lot ..

mrsolo,
Your question is really quite different than waelaltaqi's, different enough that at first it made it hard to follow the thread on what he is having problems with. You may wish to post a seperate thread to linux-networking with a title like, "waiting too long for DHCP to get an address" to have your problem addressed.