dhclient filling up my logfiles

[Lowell Gilbert]

Hasse <webmaster at swedehost.com> writes:

> On Thursday 19 June 2003 17.47, Hasse wrote:
> > Hi everybody.
> > Running FreeBSD 4.8-Stable.
> > I'm connected to the internet by ADSL and dynamic IP.
> > Dhcp-client keeps filling up my /var/log/messages.
> > Makes a log-entry every 10th minute.
> >
> > <snip>
> > Jun 19 17:35:56 odin dhclient: New Network Number: 217.209.211.0
> > Jun 19 17:35:56 odin dhclient: New Broadcast Address: 217.209.211.255
> > Jun 19 17:44:48 odin dhclient: New Network Number: 217.209.211.0
> > Jun 19 17:44:48 odin dhclient: New Broadcast Address: 217.209.211.255
> > </snip>
> >
> > I'm running it with a practically empty dhclient.conf file.
> > Only added one line to preserve my resolv.conf file.
> > prepend domain-name-servers 127.0.0.1;
> >
> > According to the man-page dhclient(8), it's possible to
> > add a "-q" switch to only log errors.

No, that's not what the man page says the option does.  That option
keeps anything but errors being sent to standard error; it has no
relationship to the system log.

> > <snip>
> >  The client normally prints a startup message and displays the  protocol
> >        sequence  to  the  standard  error  descriptor until it has acquired
> > an address, and then only logs messages using  the  syslog  (3)  facility.
> > The  -q flag prevents any messages other than errors from being printed to
> > the standard error descriptor.
> > </snip>

Read that again to see what I mean.

> > Check the lease file you're receiving, if it has a rediculously short
> > lease time complain to your provider.

This was obviously the situation.

> This excessive logging behavior started for about 4 days ago.
> At least, thats when I got aware of it.
> Everything is working just fine, except for this.
> My IP-address hardly ever change. I've had the same one for nearly a year now. 
> There got to be a way to tell it to only log errors, not every connection, 
> but I don't know how.
> I was looking for a way in the syslog.conf, but I have very little 
> understanding for that tool. ( not a clue ).
> Any more hints or clues would be preciated.

Pick the dhclient messages up in a different log file.

Something like (untested):
!dhclient
*.*     /var/log/dhcpd

> This is a snip from my lease file :
> lease {
>   interface "xl0";
>   fixed-address 217.209.211.129;
>   option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
>   option time-offset 3600;
>   option routers 217.209.211.1;
>   option dhcp-lease-time 1200;

Yep, your lease time is 10 minutes long.

>   option dhcp-message-type 5;
>   option domain-name-servers 127.0.0.1,10.0.0.1,10.0.0.2;
>   option dhcp-server-identifier 10.0.113.1;
>   option broadcast-address 217.209.211.255;
>   renew 5 2003/6/20 12:18:03;
>   rebind 5 2003/6/20 12:26:08;
>   expire 5 2003/6/20 12:28:38;
> }

Try setting your dhclient.conf to ask for a longer lease.  If that
fails, pull the dhclient messages into another file...