Bug 437953

Summary:	dhclient doesn't work by default in IPv6-only environment
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5	Reporter:	Pekka Savola <pekkas>
Component:	initscripts	Assignee:	initscripts Maintenance Team <initscripts-maint-list>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	Brock Organ <borgan>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	5.1	CC:	dcantrell, notting, pb, redhat-bugzilla
Target Milestone:	rc
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2009-09-02 20:21:41 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Pekka Savola 2008-03-18 12:43:50 UTC

Description of problem:

If you bring your DHCPv4 laptop to a network which doesn't support IPv4, even if
the laptop and the network is IPv6-enabled, interface configuration fails. This
appears to be because dhclient is unable to get contact to DHCP servers and get
IPv4 address, it shuts down the interface after a while.

Dhclient and initscripts framework should be re-examined in the light of various
different IPv4-IPv6 interoperability scenarios, for example:
1) ipv4-only network, with manual config
2) ipv4-only network, with dhcp config
3) ipv4/ipv6 dual stack network, ipv6 stateless autoconfiguration, ipv4 dhcp
4) ipv4/ipv6 dual stack network, ipv6 stateless autoconfiguration, dhcpv6 for
DNS server information, ipv4 dhcp (to work in cases where ipv4 doesn't work)
5) ipv4/ipv6 dual stack network, dhcpv6 for address and DNS server information,
ipv4 dhcp
6) ipv6-only network, with dhcpv6 for information, stateless for addresses
7) ipv6-only network, with dhcpv6 for addresses and information

This was triggered by me participating in the IETF ipv6-only experiment:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/14/1812223

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

RHEL 5.1.

How reproducible:

Insert interface configuration with BOOTPROTO=dhcp and IPv6 enabled to a network
which has IPv6 but does not have a DHCPv4 server.

The interface configuration fails after about 1-2 minutes after you bring the
interface up (during which IPv6 can be used fine), with the following printed if
you do ifup ethX on console::

PING 130.129.16.1 (130.129.16.1) from 130.129.20.83 eth1: 56(84) bytes of
data.

--- 130.129.16.1 ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 0 received, +3 errors, 100% packet loss, time 2999ms
, pipe 3
 failed.

(130.129.16.1 here is the historical IPv4 default gateway AFAIR and
130.129.20.83 corresponds to the IPv4 address the host has last used on an
ipv4-enabled network.)

Additional info:
With the following interface flags, this works to some degree:

PERSISTENT_DHCLIENT=yes
DHCLIENT_ARGS="-nw"

the first line instructs dhclient to keep running and not exit if it doesn't get
address; -nw allows you to start using the system immediately rather than
waiting for about 1 minute to get an IPv4 address.

I'm not sure if these cause problems in some other environments though; I have
not seen ill effects to date.

One particular problem for which I could not figure out a solution for has been
how you configure DNS information in various dual-stack or ipv6-only
environments.  DNS server configuration could be obtained using various ways
(e.g. with PEERDNS=no|yes and DNS[12]=address, DHCPv4 and DHCPv6) and it does
not necessarily correspond to to a working IP version; it's also not obvious
what the precedence order of these configurations should be.

These issues are discussed in RFC4477.

Some solution is needed in this space but I don't know what would be the optimal
solution.

Comment 1 Bill Nottingham 2009-03-20 15:47:44 UTC

Hm, your 'network down' issue is just another case of bug 491009, more or less. However, in this case it's dhclient behavior, and I don't think it's configurable.
CC'ing dhclient maintainer.

Comment 2 Bill Nottingham 2009-09-02 20:21:41 UTC

Given that this is the behavior for a long time running, changing it in an update release would not be appropriate. Closing as WONTFIX for RHEL 5 and earlier.

Comment 3 David Cantrell 2009-09-02 21:04:38 UTC

dhclient that shipped in RHEL-5 doesn't support the DHCPv6 protocol.  For that, you have to run dhcp6c (which is in RHEL-5).

Comment 4 Pekka Savola 2009-09-03 05:21:02 UTC

David Cantrell: that's not the point.  The point is, if you have "BOOTPROTO=dhcp" configured, and connect to a network that only provides IPv6, dhclient failing brings down the interface, even if you'd be running DHCPv6 or stateless address autoconfiguration.

I.e., this is based on a (now) broken assumption that "if you can't get DHCPv4 response on an interface that has DHCPv4 enabled [e.g. laptops], you don't have usable connectivity and you should take the interface down".