dhcp-helper - A DHCP/BOOTP relay agent.
dhcp-helper is a DHCP and BOOTP relay agent. It listens for
DHCP and BOOTP broadcasts on directly connected subnets and relays them to
DHCP or BOOTP servers elsewhere. It also relays replies from the remote
servers back to partially configured hosts. Once hosts are fully configured
they can communicate directly with their servers and no longer need the
services of a relay.
The only required option is at least one DHCP server to relay to.
The simplest way to configure dhcp-helper on a router is just to give the
interface to the network containing the DHCP server with a -b option.
All the other interfaces present on the machine will then accept DHCP
requests. On a machine which does not have an interface on the network
containing the DHCP server, use a -s option instead.
- -s <server>
- Specify a DHCP or BOOTP server to relay to. The server may be given as a
machine name or dotted-quad IP address. More than one server may be
specified.
- -b <interface>
- Relay to a DHCP or BOOTP server using broadcast via <interface>.
This eliminates the need to give a server address. <interface> is
automatically added to the list of interfaces which will not receive DHCP
requests.
- -i <interface>
- Specify which local interfaces to listen on for DHCP/BOOTP broadcasts. If
no -i flags are given all interfaces are used except those
specified by -e flags and those specified by -b flags.
- -e <interface>
- Specify which local interfaces to exclude.
- -p
- Use alternative ports (1067/1068) for the DHCP client and server.
- -v
- Report the software release version and copyright information.
- -d
- Debug mode, do not change UID, write a pid-file or go into the
background.
- -r <file>
- Specify an alternate path for dhcp-helper to record its process-id in.
Normally /var/run/dhcp-helper.pid.
- -u <username>
- Specify the userid to which dhcp-helper will change after startup. The
daemon must normally be started as root, but it will drop root priviledges
after startup by changing id to another user. Normally this user is
"nobody" but that can be over-ridden with this switch.
Dhcp-helper requires a 2.2 or later Linux kernel. The "Linux
packet filter" and "packet socket" facilities are not
required, which is the chief advantage of this software over the ISC DHCP
relay daemon.
This manual page was written by Simon Kelley
<simon@thekelleys.org.uk>.