[SOLVED]DHCP Not Running

[stuartiannaylor]

I think you need to make a new category on the forum for newbies.   especially for the likes of myself.

I just installed Zentyal and I am a previous ClearOS user. ClearOS has some problems in that the CentOS RHEL updates are very slow. PHP is still locked at 5.16 and even though its a very good and stable platform I am jumping ship to Zentyal.

No offence but I found the documentation annoying as all thats needed is a user guide with examples for what is prob a fairly standard setup. Zentyal as a standalone gateway as a samba PDC.

Anyway I am going to post my progress and this is my first problem. This one is a funny one as I have been cursing to why I have had to set a static address on a client to connect. I couldnt get the DHCP server to run.
Everything seemed to be OK !? Then it suddenly dawned Doh!

DHCP ranges

Interface IP address:    192.168.2.1
Subnet:   192.168.2.0/24
Available range:    192.168.2.1 - 192.168.2.254

Why it says the above I have no idea, but I presumed the DHCP was set and working! I suggest changing the title to "DHCP ranges available"

Anyway I added a DHCP range and hey presto everything works.

Named the range CAG with room for a couple of static addresses at the start.

[Sam Graf]

Hi, and welcome to Zentyal.

In my long experience with open source projects, too often newbies think of a newbie forum as a shortcut around a learning curve. You'll be glad to know that in the Linux world, the majority of the active community here seems to be rank newbies. We're all in this together, learning curve and all.

The language used in DHCP setup has stumped a lot of people. In hindsight it makes more sense, but I agree that it isn't intuitive to everybody (it wasn't to me either). The available range is the entire address space available for use as either dynamic or fixed/static LAN addresses. Since Zentyal disallows allocating fixed addresses out of a DHCP range, it doesn't make obvious sense for it to allocate up front the entire address space for DHCP use. So it allocates nothing and "prevents" confusion by refusing to start the DHCP service.

An easy alternative would be for Zentyal to allocate some portion of the available range up front. That way everything would work in some expected way from the start, and refinements could be made later. Since Zentyal is a localized product, it may be tough to get precisely the right language. And I personally prefer a more active type of hand holding where usability is shown to be a problem, such as usable defaults or setup wizards. The developers have said Zentyal 2.2 (in development as Zentyal 2.1) will come with usability improvements, and maybe this is an area they've targeted.

[stuartiannaylor]

Hi Sam,

I agree with what you say. Once you get to grips with the DHCP module its pretty plain sailing. I have seen a few reviews online about Zentyal and it gets some unfair criticism that it seems inoperable. I guess its just the translation but the wording and presentation confused the hell out of me. Two of the articles I read mentioned the DHCP fault and it isn't. I am a big fan of the potential of Zentyal and I am planning to make the investment.

When I am evaluating products it is always nice nice to see an out of the box running example. Its an assumption but I guess it would be relatively easy to provide an automated script that sets up a gateway. 1 Ip set up as external through dhcp and a static on a free non rout-able subnet. A basic gateway, webserver, email setup with a couple of users and shares through samba would just give a quick start for us tinkerers.

I have sort of progressed from that point but I think the developers would see a much wider adoption and uptake if the learning curve wasn't like the accent of the Eiger.

I like Zentyal and if I get around to it I might publish a screener of a basic set-up on youtube.

Anyway pleased to meet you all and I wish Zentyal all the best.