How to "ping" a DHCP server

[Ben Boulanger]

On Sat, 2003-01-18 at 15:22, Michael O'Donnell wrote: 
> Is there some easy way I can tell from the
> commandline whether a DHCP server is alive on
> my network?  Ideally it would be a very short,
> low impact little probe that would maybe just do
> (say) a DHCPDISCOVER and then report the results,
> preferably including the time it took to do it.  TIA


Welp, if you still have the dchpcd client on your box somewhere, you
could use the -T flag... That's the testing mode: 

-T     Test case, when dhcpcd goes through  the  DHCP  negotiation 
       sequence  but  doesn't  actually configure the interface or 
       otherwise change anything on the system. Used primarily for 
       testing DHCP servers.