# How is my coworker fixing this wireless problem?



## jeffbsd (Aug 31, 2011)

Let me explain my situation. I'm filling in for my boss who quit abruptly recently while my masters find someone to replace him. This means that I, with only low-level experience, am suddenly responsible for our medium-sized workplace network. 

Most of it is Windows, which I'm okay with, but we have a FreeBSD (might be OpenBSD, but I hope that won't matter for what I'm going to ask) firewall/dhcp server that connects us to the outside world. The guy who built this server a few years ago no longer works for us, but we still contact him to remote in and tweak things from time to time because he apparently enjoys doing these things for free. Let's call him "Todd."

One problem we have occasionally is that a staff member will suddenly lose their wireless connection to our wireless subnet. We can usually get them connected by putting a static ip into their device, but dhcp won't give them a lease even after releasing/renewing the lease on their device. When we get to this part, we usually call Todd, give him the MAC address of the device, he remotes in, and within 10 minutes he has dhcp working again with the device. My boss wasn't much of a Unix guy and didn't mind calling Todd to do this, but I'd like to know what Todd is doing so I don't have to be the one to call him all the time since he's kind of snarky. 

So with just the MAC address, he does something to I assume the firewall/dhcp server machine. I don't know what it's running, but I imagine it's dhcpd. Any idea how he's doing this or are there too many possibilities given the limited information I have? I'm only just learning Unix, so it might be an easy fix, but I don't know. Thank you.


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## SirDice (Aug 31, 2011)

jeffbsd said:
			
		

> but we have a FreeBSD (might be OpenBSD, but I hope that won't matter for what I'm going to ask)


It most definitely matters.

`$ uname -a` will show you what you got.


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## jeffbsd (Sep 1, 2011)

Didn't get the chance to log on to do uname, but I found out it's definitely OpenBSD after all. I assume I'll need to know the version number as well, but should I go find an OpenBSD forum to post in instead?


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## wblock@ (Sep 1, 2011)

Call me crazy, but my first impulse would be to ask the guy how he fixes it.


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## jeffbsd (Sep 1, 2011)

wblock said:
			
		

> Call me crazy, but my first impulse would be to ask the guy how he fixes it.



That would seem to make the most sense, but this guy isn't very open with his "secrets." Asking him before has only gotten cryptic, unhelpful responses.


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## DutchDaemon (Sep 1, 2011)

You might want to try the OpenBSD section of our good friends at DaemonForums.


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## jeffbsd (Sep 1, 2011)

Will do. Thank you!


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