Most Debian packages containing a daemon provide a way to not start
the daemon (for those people who want the daemon binary to be
available for whatever reason, and yet not run it, or at least not run
it with the default init script), typically with a START_DAEMON
variable in /etc/default/$name - not so with isc-dhcp-server.

There are, of course, various ways to avoid starting the server, but
they are generally unsatisfactory: e.g., I tried removing the
/etc/default/isc-dhcp-server script altogether, but it is recreated at
every package upgrade (this broke my network config, incidentally); I
could remove the /etc/init.d/isc-dhcp-server script, but it would
likewise be recreated; replacing it by a symlink to /bin/true might
run afoul of dependency-based boot; replacing it by a trivial script
would make it rather painful to restore if needed; etc.  The best I
found was adding "exit 0" inside /etc/default/isc-dhcp-server but
that's a hack.

So, please provide a clean way to avoid starting the server.  Thanks!

Did you consider putting "exit 0" in /etc/default/isc-dhcp-server?

As the above quote shows, yes. ;-)

I was mostly concerned that some other package might, for whatever
reason, want to read the DHCP server's config, and die because of
that; I admit it's not highly likely.  Also, I think it's ugly having
something like "exit 0" in a file supposed to contain only key=value
lines.  But as an interim measure, it's fine.  (That's why I marked
the bug as "minor".  But I still think it's worth fixing eventually.)

Happy hacking,

Reading comprehension fail :-)

I agree completely. I'll fix this in an upload of 4.2.4, when it comes out.

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
pp.
Thorsten Alteholz (the ftpmaster behind the curtain)