---
title: "Putting the working server in a failover pair into \"partner down\" state"
slug: "aa-00252"
description: "To put the working server in an ISC DHCP failover pair into \"partner down\" mode, you can either edit the leases file or use omshell/OMAPI."
updated: 2020-12-29T05:10:05Z
published: 2020-12-29T05:10:05Z
canonical: "kb.isc.org/aa-00252"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://kb.isc.org/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Putting the working server in a failover pair into "partner down" state

You can either edit the leases file or do this via omshell/OMAPI.

### To change via the leases file:

Stop the server, then look for the last failover statement:

```
failover peer "Failover-Pair-Name" state {
  my state state at 1 date;
  partner state state at 1 date;
}
```

Data will vary depending on your machine, actual date, etc. In the "my state" section, change from the existing state to "partner-down":

```
failover peer "Failover-Pair-Name" state {
  my state partner-down at 1 date;
  partner state state at 1 date;
}
```

Leave the date and everything else as is. Restart the server.

### To change via omshell/OMAPI:

```
omshell << EOF
server localhost
key omapi_key "XXX=="
connectnew failover-state
set name = "foo"
openset local-state = 4
update
EOF
```

Note that you will have to enable OMAPI in your `dhcpd.conf` file to use omshell:

```
# To enable OMAPI
omapi-port 7911;
key omapi_key {
        algorithm HMAC-MD5;
        secret "XXXX==";
};
omapi-key omapi_key;
```