DHClient: Understanding ‘RTNETLINK Answers: File Exists’ Error

dhclientdhcplinux

I wanted to update the DHCP lease of an Amazon EC2 instance, so I executed the following command:

user@host:~$ sudo dhclient

Following that, the system's DHCP lease is updated successfully updated. However, the command prints the following to the console:

RTNETLINK answers: File exists

What on earth does that mean? Is it a cause for concern?

For what it's worth, dhclient returned without any errors:

user@host:~$ echo $?
0

Best Answer

Basically what happens is that dhclient adds a route to the routing table.

It tries this while the route is already in the table.

Check 

ip route

for a route which was added by the dhcp server.

For having the lease renewed do

dhclient -r

if thats not enough you can remove all leases by removing the file and getting a new lease

sudo rm /var/lib/dhcp/dhclient.leases; sudo dhclient eth0

Depending on your exact setup this might be an issue with having to type your password twice, so watch out for that.

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