I'm experimenting with kea, the ISC's replacement for their dhcpd server. So far I am cautiously optimistic.
I have kea up and running in a limited trixie environment. It handles one client computer on a direct IPv4 only Ethernet link. I have imported my dhcpd list of reserved hosts, and kea recognizes one of them, and assigns the proper IP address and host name. I have not experimented with ddns updating or kea's replacement for failover, which kea calls high availability. I will want both of those. If you are contemplating a similar conversion, I suggest the following: * Install keama and use that to translate your dhcpd configuration file(s). Hang on to them. * Do the usual installation with apt or your favorite tool. Get familiar with the configuration files in /etc/kea. Get kea running as is with no customizations. This will involve assigning one or more interfaces in an "interfaces-config" statement. If you don't do that, the server will refuse to run, handy for those who use only one of IPv4 or IPv6. * Once you've done that, introduce one or a few changes at a time. I keep a terminal window open with: journalctl --no-pager -n 60 -f -u kea-dhcp4-server.service running. Errors will show up there. In my experience most errors are JSON syntax errors, often caused by not copying over your configuration correctly. I reload the server with its newly edited configuration with systemctl reload-or-restart kea-dhcp4-server.service You can also check on your leases with cat /var/lib/kea/kea-leases4.csv* My next steps: * Upgrade or re-install my firewall/network services server to trixie. I won't do this until about a month after trixie is release. * Install kea and bind. Get those running separately. * Get DDNS running. * Get another kea server running trixie. * Get bind and kea running there. * Set up high availability between the two kea servers. * Turn some or all of this into a Debian wiki page. Any thoughts? -- Does anybody read signatures any more? https://charlescurley.com https://charlescurley.com/blog/
