Services

I have an issue with Monowall,  it will be up and running fine for hours,   and then it will randomly just stop giving out DHCP addresses,    statics work just fine. 

right now the only way i've found to fix it, is a reboot of the monowall server,  but,  as i'm using this in an internet cafe,   it kinds of annoys customers when they can't get online while i'm rebooting.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

anything in your system logs when it stops working?

Nothing out of the ordinary as far as i can see,    there is one computer that keeps banging away for a DHCP lease,  that i don't recognize,  could be someone trying to use our network for free,     

but even so,  i dont see how that would stop the DHCP server from giving out leases.

... there is one computer that keeps banging away for a DHCP lease,  that i don't recognize,  could be someone trying to use our network for free ...

I would try blocking this computer and see if that helps.  Not sure if it's related but, there was a security vunerability 3 years ago where an attacker could send a crafted packet that crashes the DHCP server.

Wouldn't be DoS related, unless it's an unknown security issue. Not likely. What's more likely is that banging away is making your log file huge, logs in m0n0wall are kept in memory, it runs out of RAM and starts killing off processes because it has no swap.

That's my best guess at least. I would fix whatever machine is hammering the DHCP server.

Unfortunately, that machine seems to be someone's latptop that's not located in our building,   prolly one of our neigbhors machines that's connecting to our wireless.

Then I'd suggest securing your wireless network!    You have no idea who that might be, it could very well be somebody trying to screw with your DHCP server.

Nah, it's just one of our neigbors who's computer just happens to be closer to our access point than their own. 

As to securing the network,   It's designed to be an open network,   i'm sick of having to babysit people through using a WEP key,   we can only use WEP as so many of our customers have older machines/wireless cards that can only do WEP,   and since WEP can be broken by any 5 year old with laptop in about 5 minutes...

I'd prefer to have it secured,  but the powers that be have decried otherwise...

And since i talked to the neigbors, that machine is no longer repeadedly asking for a DHCP lease,  it has not however solved the problem, 

The Monowall server sill randomly stops giving out DHCP leases,    and randomly letting people through the portal without authentication,   only a Reboot(or changing the machine that is getting through the portal's IP) solves the problem.

Did you ever find a solution or cause as to why the Monowall DHCP server stops working?

I have the exact same problem on a WRAP platform where it runs for days on end and then suddenly stops serving IP-adresses...