dhcpd: uid lease 192.168.1.150 for client xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx is duplicate on 192.168.1/24

or something like it, in your dhcp logs? Well I checked /var/log/messages today and saw that I had thousands of this message repeated over and over (so much so it was spamming my log  and making it harder to find what might be important stuff). I searched around the ‘net and found some hints but nothing conclusive. The hints pointed toward a duplicate lease (duh) but more specifically lead me to check my leases file. Mine was located in /var/db/dhcpd/dhcpd.leases.

It turns out that what caused this error for me was that I had started the machine in question (the MAC address has been altered to protect the innocent haha) before I had the time to create a reservation for it. Then after it already had an address leased to it, I created a reservation for it (for internal DNS purposes, nothing more). Apparently because duplicates are allowed by default in isc dhcpd, when the machine’s networking was restarted and it got it’s new reserved IP, the server kept the original lease (which was that .150 address) and also got a lease from it’s reservation (.80 on my network). Since the .150 lease was still present in the leases file it caused the warning message (over and over and over for a month).

So if you are using isc dhcpd, and you use reservations, and you’re getting these error messages, you might want to check your leases file and make sure that you don’t have a lease for something that also has a reservation under a different IP.

The other pages I found on my search also suggested that you might have a reservation that hands out an address that is within your dynamic scope. You definitely don’t want to do that, so you may need to check that out as well in your dhcpd.conf.

For the curious, I run FreeBSD 7 on a Pentium 4 Dell desktop (I think it’s a dimension series, I haven’t looked at it in a while haha) that sits in my kitchen as a headless DNS/DHCP/Web/Random Unix Fun server. It’s actually making lots of bad noise lately and I think one of it’s fans might be going I’ll check that out and report back

After a somewhat discouraging attempt at installing NetBSD (see the first article in the series), I decided to try the OS that first showed me how nice the PPC architecture is for Linux – Yellow Dog. I figured that since Yellow Dog was great when I tried it about 2 or 3 years ago it would be even better now, especially with all the support Terra Soft has been getting from Sony. What I found, however, was that YDL was not quite what I had hoped. In fact I was very disappointed.

When I install an operating system I look for a few basic things, the first of which being a quick and reliable way to install. I’ve installed several operating systems and several distributions of Linux and so far Yellow Dog is the only one that requires either a 3+GB DVD or 6 CD’s to install. 6 CD’s and every one is required? That is simply insane. What if I just want to try the OS for a while? What if I only need a minimal system? What if I don’t have enough hard disk space to install every application under the sun? Yellow Dog Linux was not designed with these “what if’s” in mind.

After a few unsuccessful attempts at downloading the DVD ISO image (each attempt stalled at or near 2/3 completion, which is not YDL’s fault but still not fun) I decided to get all 6 CD images burned instead. At least this way I would be able to download the distribution in smaller chunks. I thought that since I already downloaded everything that the install would go fairly quickly. I was wrong. It took about 2 and a half hours to install from the CDs. Granted, it’s an old 450Mhz machine with a slow FSB and 256K ram, etc. but still – 2 and a half hours is a long time. I moved forward though… swapping discs when asked and watching anxiously as the installer showed me that it was copying package after package of open source software (none of which I was allowed to choose or not choose).

When I tell you I watched anxiously, I am being very literal. The install process consisted primarily of watching the installer. It didn’t ask me any questions. It didn’t let me make any choices. It only prompted me to insert CD after CD. After disc 6 I was finally asked for the root password and was invited to create a user account for myself. I expected to be asked for some networking information at least, but was not. Root password and user account name and password. That’s it. I tried to tell myself that it was a hassle-free install (again since I don’t count the download as YD’s fault, really), but I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no way to configure the network during the install. Normally I would configure the network first, and use it to install the operating system over the network via FTP or HTTP. With YDL network installs are not an option but I would have liked to have my network configuration done before first boot.

So far YDL had already been an unusual experience, and I hadn’t even gotten to first boot. As the machine restarted I told myself that the worst was over and that after I logged in and configured the network everything would be fine. Wrong again. I logged in with the user account I created during the install and saw a very nice looking E17 desktop. I must admit – E17 is coming along nicely. The only word I could use to describe it right now is… pimp! hahaha I mean wow. It’s one gorgeous desktop. Kudos to the E17 team. Unfortunately however, this desktop was basically for my viewing pleasure only. No program would start that was not already running for me, neither from a launcher, nor a menu. Not even the “run command” box worked for me. Seems the user account was running as a different user than X and had no permission to the display. Nothing would work as the regular user except logging in and logging out. The word that best describes this is LAME. If you are keeping track of the adjectives so far you’ll see that the negatives outweigh the positives already.

At this point I had basically lost faith in the YDL distribution. I have seen desktop Linux come a long way over the past few years and YDL took me back to a time when I could undoubtedly expect more problems than ease with Linux. Yet, I logged in as root just so I could at least take a tour and see what all of that downloading and waiting and watching would get me.

As root, launchers worked and the menu too. Firefox started and was very responsive, even with the limited resources. Even OpenOffice’s writer and spreadsheet programs worked fairly quickly. I was reminded that the PPC architecture is great, even without OS X. This moment of happiness was short lived – I found out soon after opening Firefox that there was no flash support for Apple PPC Linux. There will most likely never be official Adobe Flash support for Apple PPC Linux. That saddens me but not to the point where I’m going to give up on the whole project.

I looked around some more and found some more things I didn’t like (while trying to find things to like). Apache came pre-installed and so did Java and Python. PHP and Ruby were left out though, and those are my two favorite languages to code with. Some Gnome games were installed, but not Gnome sudoku (which is awesome, btw).

In summation, if you add up all the adjectives you get this – Yellow Dog Linux on Apple PPC is a disappointing, lame, pimp (remember that E17 is PIMP). A disappointing lame pimp that saddens and frustrates the user, but looks so nice. What else can I say? At least it’s better than OS 9? I’m not sure I can even say that. I guess any Linux is more fun to use than OS 9… but a crippled desktop is a crippled desktop, pimped out or not.

So where does this leave the Golden Apple Project? To paraphrase the beautiful Joss Stone… My hopes for this old PowerMac G4 are “Bruised but not broken”. I’m going to try OpenBSD… and I have plans to revisit NetBSD as well. There is no giving up on this quest! Stay tuned…

Though I could probably get away with an install of OS X Tiger, I knew in my heart that it would be wrong to use the Tiger install disk that I have to install it on a second machine. Actually I just thought it would probably run too slow, but hey it’s still illegal and that’s not how I do things… right? Right. So it was just a question of whether it would be Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, or some other free OS. I decided to try NetBSD first.

NetBSD has supported PPC for a while, just one of the many architectures supported by the ultra portable BSD. The story here is fairly short and somewhat funny – I was able to install the OS but never figured out how to get it to boot. Lesson learned: Knowledge of Open Firmware is essential when you’re dealing with an Apple PPC machine like the PowerMac G4. I found this site and this site to be helpful, as well as the install notes for NetBSD. Oddly though, even following the notes to the letter I was unable to boot the OS. I gave up after seeing that my Open Firmware 2.4 system might not be supported at all due to what might be a “broken” Open Firmware. In hindsight I think I was just using the wrong device designation in my boot command. I might try it again.

In part II of the Golden Apple Project I try out Terra Soft’s Yellow Dog Linux. Which operating system will win the right to run on my shiny old G4? Stay tuned to find out!

Step 1 – Preparations

First of all you need an eMac. The emac is one of those in-between apple
models- it looks like a cross between the first iMac and the new iMac. It’s
a one piece unit, all inclusive. I assume you have that already. It helps
if you have a powerbook handy, maybe even one running OS X. I found it to
be very helpful. You’ll also need one blank cd (at least) and a working
internet connection. Patience is not required! In fact if you had patience
you could install OpenBSD the easy way (remember the easy way is to just
read the directions and follow them. Feel free to give up trying the hard
way at any time!)

Step 2 – I could do this blindfolded

Here’s where the real fun begins! Download the entire macppc folder from
your favorite mirror and put it in the sites folder of your powerbook. You
don’t need the packages, just everything in /pub/OpenBSD/$VERSION/macppc/.
Trust me. Get the whole folder. From that folder find the iso image (there’s
only one iirc) and burn it. Burn it the right way, there’s no need to do that
wrong just to add extra fun

Once your cd is ready to go, pop it in your emac and boot it up by holding
c on the keyboard while it powers up. You should see a bunch of text scroll
by as the installer begins. Once you get to the prompt asking you what you
want to do, say install. Duh it’s what you’re here for isn’t it?
Now you get some warnings about data loss *pssssh* data shmayta we don’t
care so just get by those however you can. The OpenBSD folks won’t let you
just press enter so you might need to type “yes” explicitly. Don’t worry though,
they won’t stop you from making your life difficult, no one can!
When you get to a choice between HFS and MBR choose MBR. Don’t bother
reading the screen just enter it and lets’s go! We want this done NOW don’t
we? Of course!

Ok now you tell the installer you want to use the whole disk. Do you think
you really want to use os x on this old emac? No way… You already have a
powerbook with os x on it anyway right?

Here is where you should definitely stop paying attention to what’s on the
screen. There’s a warning there about removing the i partition or something?
On to step 3!

Step 3 – Making life difficult

Are you ready to make things hard? So far it’s been pretty easy right? We have
come to that crucial moment where everything goes wrong. You should be in
the disklabel editor by now. You might not know what that is, and if you don’t…
you should be installing OpenBSD the right way, not this way. So assuming you
know what disklabel is, use it to delete the a and i and anything else in there that
isn’t the c partition. Why not c? Come on! Every OpenBSD sophomore knows that
the c partition represents the whole disk and is not to be touched. Duh! Just get
rid of everything else.

Create partitions any way you like… I guess it all depends on how much space you
have on the disk. Once you’re done, w and q and say yes to those prompts that
whine something about you losing all of your data. When the formatting is done,
we’ll continue.

Step 4 – That was easy!

Ok now that we made it through the disk setup, I imagine you’re smart enough to
get the networking set up. It’s pretty easy since you have a dhcp server. Don’t you?
You should… it makes things pretty easy Once you’re done with all that (you’re
so smart!) it’s time to install the OS.

I suggest you use that powerbook with os x that I mentioned earlier. Makes things so much
easier. All you need to do is put that macppc folder (directory, whatever) into your
Sites directory (folder, whatever) and turn on personal web sharing. Then we tell the
OpenBSD install program we want to use http. No proxy, and no need to list the servers.
We are going to use the server on the powerbook. *cough* The powerbook is on a network
with the emac isn’t it?

Right. So tell the install program the IP address of your PB (don’t put http://) and then
the directory (usually it’s ~User/macppc or something like that… but you’re smart enough
to figure that out aren’t you? that’s why you’re doing things the hard way!). It should work
(of course it does you genius!) and so you can just choose the install sets you want and say
done. Look at that! It’s installing!

Step 5 – Oops

Well hey whattya know?! OpenBSD seems to be complaining about a missing i partition. Ha!
Looks like maybe we should not have removed it earlier. I didn’t see anything in the INSTALL
doc though? Did you? Oh we didn’t really *read* that did we? haha *sigh* Oh well – you can fix this. It’s not like you’re an OpenBSD newbie! haha (you’re a sophomore!). But how?

Step 6 – Ok why is this so hard?

Figure it out yet? Well it sure took me a while haha. The problem is that we really do need
that i partition, and if we had done things the Right Way(tm) also known as the Easy Way(tm)
this would have been revealed to us while we were paying attention to the output from the
installer. You see after you choose MBR as your type and you say you want to use the whole
disk, the OpenBSD install program will create and format an i partition, which is where the
ofwboot program is copied (which is what allows OpenBSD to boot… imagine that!)

Well what I did to recover from this issue was get a firewire cable (luckily I had one handy)
and boot with my PB plugged in via target disk mode (t during boot up). This allowed me to
repartition the drive with my mac. Then I used fdisk -i from the installer shell just to be sure
that the MBR was fixed up, and I zeroed out the disklabel. After that, I actually READ the
install documentation AND the output during the install. Yeah, I gave up and went the easy
route It turns out that all you need to do is add i and make sure that it’s your 1MB msdos
partition. I used the b option to tell disklabel to use everything from sector 2049 to the end
of the disk, since i was from 0 to 2048. After I did that… I got a contratulations! message
instead of a “OpenBSD will not be able to boot” message. Hooray!

Now I’m having fun and installing all the packages I want… this is great. I could have been
doing this yesterday if I had gone the easy way… Learn anything?