Hostapd & dnsmasq delayed getting IP

[Chewbacca Rampage]

Strange problem. I have

iptables
dnsmasq
madwifi
hostapd

Everything works fine. I added Hostapd and it works fine, but dnsmasq does not give an IP address immediately. The strange thing is, if I leave the client machine on, at random, it will get an IP address eventually. I've tested this a couple of times and I get it ranging from 3 minutes to 1 hour of waiting.

Checking the logs on the server, I see this repeated at lot:

[gerdesj]

I am not an expert on hostapd but I am familiar with dhcp.

Have you got it set to ping an address to see if it is free before allocation. Try turning it off if it is on. The repeated requsts indicate something like this.

Another thing I've just found: From http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/docs/FAQ

Q: This new DHCP server is well and good, but it doesn't work for me.
What's the problem?

A: There are a couple of configuration gotchas which have been
encountered by people moving from the ISC dhcpd to the dnsmasq
integrated DHCP daemon. Both are related to differences in
in the way the two daemons bypass the IP stack to do "ground up"
IP configuration and can lead to the dnsmasq daemon failing
whilst the ISC one works.

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.

There is also this but I think it is rubbish!

Q: Why does my Gentoo box pause for a minute before getting a new
lease?

A: Because when a Gentoo box shuts down, it releases its lease with
the server but remembers it on the client; this seems to be a
Gentoo-specific patch to dhcpcd. On restart it tries to renew
a lease which is long gone, as far as dnsmasq is concerned, and
dnsmasq ignores it until is times out and restarts the process.
To fix this, set the dhcp-authoritative flag in dnsmasq.


Cheers
Jon

[Chewbacca Rampage]

I think I found the problem, but how to solve it?