Package: dhcp3-server
Version: 3.0+3.0.1rc9-2
Severity: wishlist

Greetings,

Managing dhcpd.conf is annoying, especially for a large cluster.  So,
why not provide for automatic management using debconf?  Well, because
there's a lot of information to enter for a lot of machines, right?

The update-cluster package provides a centralized list of machines with
hostname, ip and mac address, and can manage multiple such lists for a
variety of purposes.  A number of packages use its list(s) and tools to
automatically manage configuration files, these packages include jmon,
rarpd, mpich, mosix and dsh, and update-cluster-hosts can manage
/etc/hosts using the same mechanism.  Being able to manage dhcp info
using this mechanism as well would be terrific (though of course not for
everyone, there would have to be a "do you want to manage dhcpd.conf?"
question).

I've attached a little (but even so, quite ugly) script which I use to
generate the bulk of my dhcpd.conf file.  I realize this would have to
be expanded quite a bit to be general enough for a good number of users.
 But with something like this put in /usr/lib/update-cluster, one would
just need to change a host's info in /etc/update-cluster/cluster.xml and
then run "update-cluster-regenerate dhcpd" to automatically recreate
/etc/dhcp3-server/dhcpd.conf.

The debconf part would provide a convenient front-end to the various
options in dhcpd.conf, consolidate the process of regenerating the
script and restarting the server (for those of us who consistently
forget the latter :-), and maintain changes across upgrades of dhcpd
which change the file format.  For example, if this had been done
earlier, config/postinst could have used the dhcp version 2 debconf
answers to geneate the version 3 conffile, and now I suppose this could
be used to generate the version 4 conffile.

I know this is a big undertaking, but would be *really* cool.  If you
don't think it's a good idea at all, feel free to close this bug, and
I'll just publicize my script more to the debian-beowulf people.  But I
think its utility goes well beyond beowulf, hence this report. :-)

Thanks,

--- Ignoring modified conffile /etc/dhcp3/dhcpd.conf (>8k)

Dear submitter,

as the package isc-dhcp has just been removed from the Debian archive
unstable we hereby close the associated bug reports.  We are sorry
that we couldn't deal with your issue properly.

For details on the removal, please see https://bugs.debian.org/1143544

The version of this package that was in Debian prior to this removal
can still be found using https://snapshot.debian.org/.

Please note that the changes have been done on the master archive and
will not propagate to any mirrors until the next dinstall run at the
earliest.

This message was generated automatically; if you believe that there is
a problem with it please contact the archive administrators by mailing
ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org.

Debian distribution maintenance software
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Thorsten Alteholz (the ftpmaster behind the curtain)