No Internet with latest dhcp, dhcpcd, dhcdbd & openrc

[Fitzcarraldo]

I had the packages dhcp, dhcpcd, dhcdbd and openrc installed, and networking and Internet access were all working. I noticed that newer versions of these four packages are available so I merged the latest versions, and now I cannot access the Internet anymore unless I manually enter the command dhclient as root user.

Here are the details of what I have installed:

[Mike Hunt]

So why don't you start dhcpd as the WARNING states?

[Fitzcarraldo]

But the WARNING does not state that; it just states "and dhcp should be removed from the default runlevel". It might be obvious to an expert, but to make it foolproof the ebuild should state "dhcp should be removed from the default runlevel and dhcpd should be added to the default runlevel".

Anyway, I did as you suggested and I still cannot access the Internet until I enter the command dhclient as root. However now on TTY1 the following message is displayed while booting:

[cwr]

Well. dhclient and dhcpd are two different things; one is a client, the other is
a server. I don't think you want the server, and the only thing I have in
/etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf is "timeout 10;" (w/o the '"', of course).

If you are running a dhcp server, for some reason, then it will need to go
in the default runlevel - at least that's where I put it; there are various
race conditions, ISTR, if it goes in the boot runlevel. Configuring a DHCP
server is left as an exercise for the student ...

dhclient (or indeed any client) is run from net.ethx when the interface comes
up; check /etc/conf.d/net for the details, it's pretty complete. I just have a
config_eth0 ("dhclient") and a fallback_eth0=( "xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx netmask
255.255.255.0 broadcast xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" ) for when there's no dhcp
server around. You may not even need the config_eth0 ("dhclient") if
you set modules("dhclient") as the default.

Good luck - Will

[Fitzcarraldo]

Thanks, Will, for your useful post.

I have solved the problem. As you wrote, dhcpd is not a DHCP client, it is a DHCP server. The file /etc/dhcp/dhcp.conf is a configuration file for a DHCP server, not a DHCP client. What I find confusing is that, according to the Gentoo Handbook (see link I posted earlier), the package dhcp also installs dhclient.

The problem was solved by adding a DHCP client to the default runlevel. As I could not see how to add dhclient to the default runlevel, I chose to add dhcpcd instead, as that is also a DHCP client. Even before I did this, eth0 was allocated an IP address by my home DHCP server (my router) -- is this being done by NetworkManager? -- but not DNS information from my home network router. This I discovered by entering the ifconfig command, which showed that eth0 on my laptop was allocated an IP address by my home network's DHCP server (my router). I also could ping an external IP address but not any domain names. Thus the problem was a DNS resolution problem.

This is precisely what I did:

1. I removed dhcdbd from the default runlevel, because it seemed to me to relate to DHCP server configuration. I also removed dhcpd from the default runlevel because dhcpd is not a DHCP client, it's a DHCP server. So the situation looked like this:

[cwr]

It was almost certainly being launched as the default from /etc/conf.d/net, via
/etc/runlevels/default/net.eth0, a link to /etc/init.d/net.eth0, in turn linked to
/etc/init.d/net.lo.

Check /etc/resolv.conf - it may well say, as mine does:
# Generated by dhclient for interface eth0
192.168.0.1
which by a curious coincidence is the address of my local router ...

Will

[Fitzcarraldo]

This is what /etc/resolv.conf contains now:

[Fitzcarraldo]

Now that I have the DHCP client dhcpcd running instead of dhclient, the leases files are /var/lib/dhcpcd/dhcpcd-eth0.lease and /var/lib/dhcpcd/dhcpcd-wlan0.lease, and the dhclient leases files no longer exist on my HDD.