If you made changes to the configuration of your DHCP (dhcpd) server, you will have to stop and restart the server manually. On OpenBSD and Unix like operating system, you kill the dhcpd server and restart manually. Another option is to send HUP (SIGHUP) to dhcpd server.
Method#1: Find dhcpd PID and kill it
Type the following ps command to find dhcpd PID as root user:
# ps ax | grep dhcpd
Sample outputs:
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TT STAT STARTED TIME COMMAND
_dhcp 13420 0.0 0.1 588 568 ?? Ss 10:27PM 0:00.04 dhcpd re0
You need to kill that process with kill command.
# kill -9 13420
To start dhcpd, type the following commands:
# touch /var/db/dhcpd.leases
# dhcpd -q re0
Method #2: Say hello to /etc/rc.d/dhcpd script
You can skip all of the above commands. Use rc script as follows to start, stop, restart, and check dhcpd server on OpenBSD:
/etc/rc.d/dhcpd start
/etc/rc.d/dhcpd stop
/etc/rc.d/dhcpd restart
/etc/rc.d/dhcpd check
4 comment
Why would you kill -9? That should only be used when a process is not responding.
I’m using OpenBSD 6.0 and I know dhcpd is running (clients obtain leases), but I don’t have it on my list of processes:
root@openbsd /root# ps aux | grep dhcpd
root 49136 0.0 0.0 1996 1488 p0 R+ 12:10PM 0:00.00 grep dhcpd (z
How do I check it’s PID?
Not really sure why you asked this question the PID is in your comments 49136.
do a
/etc/rc.d/dhcpd check
/etc/rc.d/dhcpd restart
ps -axc | grep ‘dhcpd’ | sed -E ‘s/([^ ]+){1}.*/\1/’
That will give you your pid
Adrian, 49136 looks like PID for the “grep” command and not DHCPD. I ran into this a couple of times before.