#1039244 isc-dhcp: ships sysv-init script without systemd unit

#1039244#5
Date:
2023-06-25 22:23:59 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer(s),

isc-dhcp has been flagged by Lintian as shipping a sysv-init script
without a corresponding systemd unit file. The default init system in
Debian is systemd, and so far this worked because a transitional
sysv-init-to-unit generator was shipped by systemd. This is in the
process of being deprecated and will be removed by the time Trixie
ships, so the remaining packages that ship init scripts without
systemd units will stop working.

There are various advantages to using native units, for example the
legacy generator cannot tell the different between a oneshot service
and a long running daemon. Also, sanboxing and security features
become available for services. For more information, consult the
systemd documentation:
https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd.unit.html

You can find the Lintian warning here:

https://lintian.debian.org/sources/isc-dhcp

In case this is a false positive, please add a Lintian override to
silence it and then close this bug.

Thanks!

#1039244#10
Date:
2025-10-15 15:24:56 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer(s) of affected packages, these bugs have been open for
more than 2 years now. Policy was updated to make units mandatory for
system services. The removal of compat with sysv-init scripts from
systemd has been postponed from trixie to forky, but it is now
approaching. In approximately a month's time, this should hit
unstable, if everything goes well.

Therefore in order to ensure the remaining bugs do not fall through
the cracks I am raising severity again, as there is a very high chance
the affected packages will stop working as intended in about a month's
time in the default setup.

As already mentioned in the original bug report, if your package is
not intended to work as a systemd service or under systemd at all,
please feel free to downgrade or close+wontifx or anything else as you
see fit. The severity raising is not intended to make anyone support
scenarios they don't wish to support, but simply to ensure attention
is given to the issue, even if just to close+wontfix. Also the bugs
were opened based on Lintian reports, and it is possible that there
might be false positives.

Thanks for your work and understanding.

#1039244#21
Date:
2026-03-16 10:37:26 UTC
From:
To:
This issue still exists and breaks the package permanently in forky.

No clue why the systemd file hasn't been included, as the
one from ubuntu isc-dhcp-server (4.4.1-2.3ubuntu2.4) works
perfectly when you create the dhcpd user and group.

The Debian wiki (https://wiki.debian.org/DHCP_Server) reports
isc-dhcp-server as the package to use to setup a dhcp server,
so I would have expected this to have been fixed by now before
things break.

Work around:
* take /lib/systemd/system/isc-dhcp-server.service from
  ubuntu package isc-dhcp-server (4.4.1-2.3ubuntu2.4)
* create system user dhcpd with own group
* systemd daemon-reload
* enable and start isc-dhcp-server

Either fix the package (ubuntu solution under a separate user is
even better) or offer an alternative dhcpd and update the wiki.

#1039244#26
Date:
2026-03-18 21:17:24 UTC
From:
To:
Hi Jan,

ISC DHCP is EOL and unlikely to make it into Forky proper:

https://www.isc.org/blogs/isc-dhcp-eol/

Please switch to ISC Kea instead. Help such as updating the wiki would be
appreciated