Currently any error encountered in n_dhcp4_c_connection_dispatch_io() causes a dispatch failure and interrupts the library state machine. The recvmsg() on the socket can fail for different reasons; one of these is for example that the UDP request previously sent got a ICMP port-unreachable response. This can be reproduced in the following way:
ip netns add ns1
ip link add veth0 type veth peer name veth1
ip link set veth1 netns ns1
ip link set veth0 up
cat > dhcpd.conf <<EOF
server-identifier 172.25.0.1;
max-lease-time 120;
default-lease-time 120;
subnet 172.25.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
range 172.25.0.100 172.25.0.200;
}
EOF
ip -n ns1 link set veth1 up
ip -n ns1 address add dev veth1 172.25.0.1/24
ip netns exec ns1 iptables -A INPUT -p udp --dport 67 -j REJECT
ip netns exec ns1 dhcpd -4 -cf dhcpd.conf -pf /tmp/dhcp-server.pid
If a client is started on veth0, it is able to obtain a lease despite the firewall rule blocking DHCP, because dhcpd uses a packet socket. Then it fails during the renewal because the recvmsg() fails:
dhcp4 (veth0): send REQUEST of 172.25.0.178 to 172.25.0.1
dhcp4 (veth0): error -111 dispatching events
dhcp4 (veth0): state changed bound -> fail
The client should consider such errors non fatal and keep running.