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Pydhcplib is a python library to read/write and encode/decode dhcp packet on network.

N.B. This is a fork of this project http://pydhcplib.tuxfamily.org/pmwiki/. The only change [so far] is the implementation of a missing feature as described in the end of this document [1].

On Debian, simply run ./setup.py install. Python modules will be installed in /usr/lib/python2.X/site-packages/pydhcplib/.

If you want to install it on a different location, use the --prefix on the setup.py command line like this:

$ ./setup.py install --prefix=/rootpath/to/your/location/

use virtualenv with correct python version $ python setup.py bdist_egg

Look in the examples directory to learn how to use the modules.:

$ man pydhcp
$ man pydhcplib

The short story is I've "stolen" the udp raw socket code from [the amazing] busybox project changing it to work with the udp payload [the actual dhcp packet] this library creates.

This was required to make it work in the case the fields giaddr and ciaddr are zero and the broadcast bit flag is not set. This requires unicasting the udp packet to the yiaddr address, which does not yet exist. Using the kernel to send the packet fails as there is no ARP information available. This requires using raw sockets to inject the missing hwaddr information.