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Running Mac OS X’s built-in DHCP server

22/05/2014

Mac OS X comes with a DHCP server built-in.

The server is called bootpd and does both DHCP and BOOTP. These instructions just describe using it for DHCP.

To start, you need to create a configuration file for the server. The file should be stored in /etc/bootpd.plist.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>bootp_enabled</key>
    <false/>
    <key>detect_other_dhcp_server</key>
    <integer>1</integer>
    <key>dhcp_enabled</key>
    <array>
        <string>en0</string>
    </array>
    <key>reply_threshold_seconds</key>
    <integer>0</integer>
    <key>Subnets</key>
    <array>
        <dict>
            <key>allocate</key>
            <true/>
            <key>lease_max</key>
            <integer>86400</integer>
            <key>lease_min</key>
            <integer>86400</integer>
            <key>name</key>
            <string>192.168.33</string>
            <key>net_address</key>
            <string>192.168.33.0</string>
            <key>net_mask</key>
            <string>255.255.255.0</string>
            <key>net_range</key>
            <array>
                <string>192.168.33.2</string>
                <string>192.168.33.254</string>
            </array>
        </dict>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

This file sets up the DHCP server to run on the interface named en0, which is typically the (non-wireless) Ethernet port. It assumes that that port has been configured with the IP address 192.168.33.1, and dishes out addresses from192.168.33.2 to 192.168.33.254.

To get more information on editing this file, take a look at the bootpd manfile:

man bootpd

To start the server, run the following command:

sudo /bin/launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/bootps.plist

Stopping the server is very similar:

sudo /bin/launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/bootps.plist

If you want to create static assignments, so that a given device always has the same IP address, you need to create a file called /etc/bootptab. There’s a small sample of the file below. For more information, just do man bootptab

%%
# machine entries have the following format:
#
# hostname      hwtype  hwaddr              ipaddr          bootfile
client1         1       00:01:02:03:04:05   10.0.0.20
client2         1       00:a0:b2:ef:ff:0a   10.0.0.20

Make sure to include the %% at the top of the file. It’s safe to leave the bootfile field empty because we’re just using bootpd as a DHCP server, not a bootp server.

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