..
   Copyright (C) 2019-2026 Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. ("ISC")

   This Source Code Form is subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public
   License, v. 2.0. If a copy of the MPL was not distributed with this
   file, You can obtain one at http://mozilla.org/MPL/2.0/.

   See the COPYRIGHT file distributed with this work for additional
   information regarding copyright ownership.

.. iscman:: kea-dhcp6

``kea-dhcp6`` - DHCPv6 server in Kea
------------------------------------

Synopsis
~~~~~~~~

:program:`kea-dhcp6` [**-v**] [**-V**] [**-W**] [**-d**] [**-F**] [**-R**] [**-X**] [**-c** config-file] [**-t** config-file] [**-p** server-port-number] [**-P** client-port-number]

Description
~~~~~~~~~~~

The ``kea-dhcp6`` daemon provides the DHCPv6 server implementation.

Arguments
~~~~~~~~~

The arguments are as follows:

``-v``
   Displays the Kea version.

``-V``
   Displays the extended Kea version.

``-W``
   Displays the configuration report.

``-d``
   Enables the debug mode with extra verbosity.

``-F``
   As of Kea 3.3.0, makes the server exit immediately on any fatal error
   detected when executing API commands. Default behavior (parameter not set)
   is to just log the error and continue, making it possible for an
   administrator to intervene and fix the issue without restarting the server.

``-R``
   As of Kea 3.3.1, starts the server in CB repair mode. DHCP service, lease
   reclamation, lease sanity checking, and configuration back end data fetching
   are all disabled. The server will still connect to configured config back
   ends but will not attempt to fetch and use config back end data. It will
   however still process all config back end API calls. This allows admins to
   correct fatal errors that may have been introduced into the config back end
   data. This mode of operation is intended to be a short term intervention
   only, once data corrections have been made the server must be restarted
   without -R to resume normal operation.

``-X``
   As of Kea 3.0, disables security restrictions. The server will still check
   for violations but will emit warning logs when they are found rather than
   fail with an error. Please see :ref:`sec-kea-runtime-security-policy-checking`
   for details.

``-c config-file``
   Specifies the configuration file with the configuration for the DHCPv6 server. It
   may also contain configuration entries for other Kea services.

``-t config-file``
   Checks the configuration file and reports the first error, if any. Note
   that not all parameters are completely checked; in particular,
   service and control channel sockets are not opened, and hook
   libraries are not loaded.

``-T config-file``
   Checks the configuration file and reports the first error, if any.
   It performs extra checks beyond what -t offers, such as establishing
   database connections (for the lease backend, host reservations backend,
   configuration backend, and forensic logging backend), loading hook libraries,
   parsing hook-library configurations, etc. It does not open UNIX or TCP/UDP sockets, nor
   does it open or rotate files, as any of these actions could interfere with
   a running process on the same machine.

``-p server-port-number``
   Specifies the server port number (1-65535) on which the server listens. This is
   useful for testing purposes only.

``-P client-port-number``
   Specifies the client port number (1-65535) to which the server responds. This is
   useful for testing purposes only.

Documentation
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Kea comes with an extensive Kea Administrator Reference Manual that covers
all aspects of running the Kea software - compilation, installation,
configuration, configuration examples, and much more. Kea also features a
Kea Messages Manual, which lists all possible messages Kea can print
with a brief description for each of them. Both documents are
available in various formats (.txt, .html, .pdf) with the Kea
distribution. The Kea documentation is available at
https://kea.readthedocs.io.

Kea source code is documented in the Kea Developer's Guide,
available at https://reports.kea.isc.org/dev_guide/.

The Kea project website is available at https://kea.isc.org.

Mailing Lists and Support
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There are two public mailing lists available for the Kea project. **kea-users**
(kea-users at lists.isc.org) is intended for Kea users, while **kea-dev**
(kea-dev at lists.isc.org) is intended for Kea developers, prospective
contributors, and other advanced users. Both lists are available at
https://lists.isc.org. The community provides best-effort support
on both of those lists.

ISC provides professional support for Kea services. See
https://www.isc.org/kea/ for details.

History
~~~~~~~

The ``b10-dhcp6`` daemon was first coded in June 2011 by Tomek
Mrugalski.

In mid-2014, Kea was decoupled from the BIND 10 framework and became a
standalone DHCP server. The DHCPv6 server binary was renamed to
``kea-dhcp6``. Kea 1.0.0 was released in December 2015.

See Also
~~~~~~~~

:manpage:`kea-dhcp4(8)`, :manpage:`kea-dhcp-ddns(8)`,
:manpage:`kea-admin(8)`, :manpage:`keactrl(8)`,
:manpage:`perfdhcp(8)`, :manpage:`kea-netconf(8)`, :manpage:`kea-lfc(8)`,
Kea Administrator Reference Manual.
