Fun ways to give your DHCP server a headache March 22, 2010

Dear Internet: I learned something today…

In the course of testing something, a host file was edited on a server. Unfortunately, that server was also a DHCP server – and if you ever edit the host file on a DHCP server with an entry that points back to itself, you will suddenly find yourself totally unable to manage said DHCP server:

You’ll only see the host file entry, and not the DHCP server. Even better? If you go to manage an authorized DHCP server, you can’t do that either:

(Yes, I have a server named Beef)

If you ever run across this, clean out your hosts file of any extraneous entries, and close and re-open your DHCP console. You won’t even have to restart the DHCP service.