dhcp.conf file created with invalid syntax

[Adam Bolte]

Binary package hint: samba

I'm using Ubuntu 9.10 with dhcp3-client 3.1.2-1ubuntu7. We have a WINS server at 10.128.41.34, which clients are informed of via DHCP. The produced dhcp.conf file (generated by dhclient using /etc/dhcp3/dhclient-enter-hooks.d/samba) seems invalid, as it produces a file using a double equals symbol to assign the WINS servers. This has been observed from a number of Ubuntu machines.

abolte@abolte-amd64:~$ cat /etc/samba/dhcp.conf
   wins server == br0:10.128.41.34
abolte@abolte-amd64:~$

Interestingly enough, the testparm command doesn't complain about it. The output does look wrong however. This could be another bug in itself I suppose, but is not the topic of this report.

abolte@abolte-amd64:~$ testparm -s 2>&1 | grep wins
 wins server = =, br0:10.128.41.34
abolte@abolte-amd64:~$

I've attached a patch which seems to fix the issue for me. Steps to use this would be (where "br0" is the interface in this case):
1. If needed, release the current lease
$ dhclient -r br0
2. Delete the dhcp.conf file
$ rm -f /etc/samba/dhcp.conf
3. Replace /etc/dhcp3/dhclient-enter-hooks.d/samba with the patched version.
4. Grab a lease
$ dhclient br0

The dhcp.conf file will now be re-created correctly as follows:

abolte@abolte-amd64:/etc/samba$ cat dhcp.conf
   wins server = br0:10.128.41.34
abolte@abolte-amd64:/etc/samba$

The patch was created against the latest (at time of reporting) samba-common_3.4.3-2ubuntu1_all package, however testing was against 3.4.0-3ubuntu5.3. The file in question has not changed between these releases.

The patch should also detect an invalid config and correct it if it exists - but only if we're making changes anyway. Perhaps this check should go in regardless of the WINS setup not changing from previous leases? There was a small change thrown in to fix up the dhcp.conf formatting too.

The problematic lines specifically seems to be:
other_servers==""
serverlist==""
which I believe end up assigning "=" instead of nothing.

[Chuck Short (zulcss)]

Thanks for the bug report ill look at getting this fixed for lucid.

Regards
chuck

[Thierry Carrez (ttx)]

Fixed by way of merging Debian's 3.4.5~dfsg-2