DHCP Client Startup

The dhcpagent daemon obtains configuration information that is needed by other processes involved in booting the system. For this reason, the system startup scripts start dhcpagent early in the boot process and wait until the network configuration information from the DHCP server arrives.

The presence of the file /etc/dhcp.interface (for example, /etc/dhcp.hme0 on a Sun Enterprise Ultra^TM system) indicates to the startup scripts that DHCP is to be used on the specified interface. Upon finding a dhcp.interface file, the startup scripts start the dhcpagent daemon.

After startup, dhcpagent waits until it receives instructions to configure a network interface. The startup scripts issue the ifconfig interface dhcp start command, which instructs dhcpagent to start DHCP as described in How DHCP Works. If commands are contained within the dhcp.interface file, they are appended to the dhcp start option of ifconfig. See the ifconfig(1M) man page for more information about options used with the dhcp option.