RADIUSD(8) Yard Radius Manual RADIUSD(8)
NAME
radiusd - Yet Another Radius Daemon (YARD RADIUS)
SYNOPSIS
radiusd [ -AbchoPsvxz ] [ -a acct_dir ] [ -d db_dir ] [ -f alt_passwd_file ] [ -i ip_addr ] [ -l log_file ] [ -p udp_port ] [ -q max_out-
standing_reqs ] [ -t max_queue_secs ] [ -w max_proxy_secs ]
DESCRIPTION
YARD radiusd is a program that provides authorization and accounting services for remote hosts, based on RADIUS protocols. RADIUS proto-
cols are defined in a pair of RFC documents and currently used by the majority of network access servers and routers in order to manage
incoming dialup connections. Open source products of RADIUS clients are also available for general use on *nix hosts.
YARD RADIUS daemon is largerly based on the original Livingston Inc. RADIUS 2.1 daemon (currently known as Lucent Inc. Remote Access RADIUS
server 2.1 - Livingston Inc. is now disappeared...). It enhances the original code with a number of useful features, such as control of
simultaneous logins, support of many non standard vendor clients, autoconfiguration capabilities, PAM services, MD5 passwords, etc. All
them are very useful in real world area of application (e.g. ISPs). A complete and up-to-date list of extensions currently present in YARD
RADIUS is available in the Changelog file, which should be enclosed in sources.
The daemon listens to a couple of non privileged UDP ports (1645 and 1646) and possibly to other two ones (1815 and 1816), when proxy is
enabled. Those ports could also be changed at run-time, but you are not encouraged to do this. If your authorization information are
available either as a separate passwd file or self-contained in users file (i.e. in some form independent from system passwd file, see
below) you could run radiusd as a non privileged users.
All configuration files of YARD RADIUS are contained under /usr/confdirectory if not spe
OPTIONS
-a acct_dir
Sets the accounting directory instead of the builtin default. The default is choosen at configuration time and it is generally
/usr/logs
-A Enable accounting via PAM. See below.
-b Uses GDBM for the users file ( users.db ) instead of the plain text version ( users ) This improve performances of users file check-
ing for authentication. It's strongly suggested. But it's not completely equivalent to plain text, because GDBM files are strictly
unsorted. This could be ok or not, it depens on your specific choices of attributes. You need to run builddbm to convert the plain
users file in the GDBM indexed file and this needs to be done every time you changes users file contents.
-c Clears user stats database. This should be done to solve troubles due to unsynchonized status among the servers and one or more of
its clients. Mabye, after a cold-reboot of an access server.
-d db_dir
Sets the database directory instead of the builtin default one. The default is choosen at configuration time and it is generally
/usr/logs.
-h Prints out usage of the command.
-f alt_passwd_file
Sets an alternate password file name to use instead of the system password file /etc/passwd.
-i ip_addr
Sets an alternate IP for the server host, instead of the default one. This is useful if the host on which the daemon is runnig has
multiple interfaces or ip aliases.
-l log_file
Sets a logging text file, to use instead of syslog.
-o Accept all-zero accounting requests authenticator. A damned thing to use with some old non-RFC compliant clients. Use this if you
see this kind of errors in the logging file, only.
-p udp_port
Set an alternate radius port number. Default ports should be (optionally) defined in /etc/services as follows:
Name Port
-------------------------
radius 1645/udp
radacct 1646/udp
radius-proxy 1815/udp
radacct-proxy 1816/udp
If they are not in that file, the above ones are used. If you specify the port `n' as the argument of -p option, then radiusd tries
to use the following ports:
Name Port
------------------------
radius n/udp
radacct n+1/udp
radius-proxy n+5/udp
radacct-proxy n+6/udp
-P Enable authorization via PAM. See below.
-q max_outstanding_reqs
Sets the incoming packets queue size. 100 is the default.
-s Forks another process for accounting. This is not generally suggested, due to dependencies among auth and acct modules in YARD
radiusd .
-t max_queue_secs
Set time out for requests queue.
-v Print version. It shows also enabled features. Version number should be a group of three point-separated numbers, such as
major.minor.patch where meaning of the three values should be obvious. It's not easy to define a `major' advancement in respect of a
`minor' one. Anyway, any minor/major number should correspond to a different branch in the CVS repository. This is not true for a
patching release.
-w max_proxy_secs
Set time out for proxy requests.
-x Set debug mode on. It increases verbosity level.
-z The same of -b -x -d . -a ra. This is intended for debugging.
FILES
radiusd requires a group of configuration files under /usr/conf in order to properly work. Examples of those working files are provided
with sources and should be present under the same directory, with extension .example. All files are well commented and it should be easy
to customize them. The work files are the following ones:
/usr/conf/users
This file contains the human readable information for users' accounting and authorization. See radius_attributes(5) for details
about its syntax.
/usr/conf/users.db
The same of the previous one as compiled in by builddbm in GDBM format. It needs to be compiled again every time you make changes to
the previous one and without restarting radiusd .
/usr/conf/dictionary
This read-only file contains the codes and formats for standard and vendor RADIUS protocol attributes and values along with their
human readable representation. It is subject to change, due to new access server supports. It is a plain text file with a pletora of
comments in it.
/usr/conf/clients
It contains names or ip addresses of remote clients authorized to use the server for authentication and accounting, along with their
passwords in clear text. So this file should be protected with mode 600.
/usr/conf/clcache
The same of the previous file as cached in GDBM format for fast access at daemon startup. With the same recommendations for file
access modes.
/usr/conf/proxy
This file is used to collect proxy hosts and their associated realms and passwords. It contains a list of remote servers to forward
to authentication and accounting requests.
Every line refers to a different proxy server: the first field is a valid hostname or ip address; the second field (seperated by
blanks or tabs) is the shared secret); the third field is the named or numeric authentication realm; the fourth field can contain
the optional RADIUS UDP Port number of the remote server, the RADIUS and RADIUS Accounting Port numbers, and any of following
optional keywords:
old Strip realm and do not attach Proxy-State
when forwarding
secure Allow remote server to authorize admin
logins for your client
ipass Use the ipass protocol
The realm string must follow an `@' sign after the username to identify the correct proxy server.
/usr/conf/allowuser
You can list here (one per line) usernames/groupnames who are granted for having access (if their password are correct). Each entry
must respect one of the following syntaxes:
USER: <username>
GROUP: <groupname>
GECOS: <string>
SHELL: <string>
so you can match users by usernames, groupnames, gcos substrings (i.e. case-sensitive sub-strings in the fifth field of the system
/etc/passwd file or the alternate password file), or shell paths. You can use the special string `ANY' as a matching argument too
(e.g. `USER: ANY'). An empty or missing file grants access to anyone which is not listed in the next file.
/usr/conf/denyuser
The same syntax of allowuser can be used to deny access to specific classes of users, with the same previous matching criteria. An
empty or missing file grants access to anyone which is listed in the previous file or not.
Note that all users have always to match their password with the authorization module selected in their `users' file entry, after the above
files allowed to login. You cannot use these files to grant access without any other additional authentication.
/usr/conf/stopuser
This text file is created by radwatch to deny access to users, when certain conditions are reached (as selected in the radwatch con-
figuration file). The authentication daemon radiusd consults that file along with `denyuser' in order to grant access or not. It
has an entry per line, which should be a valid system or `users' username.
/usr/conf/radwatch.conf
This is the configuration file for radwatch. It is a text files each line of which is of the form: user_list:restriction:time_list
where `user_list' is a comma-separated list of usernames for which this line apply. You can use @group syntax to denote the standard
UNIX user groups. The field `restriction' is the value in seconds of the maximum permitted online time within the `time_list'. This
one is the third colon separated field and is a list of days of the week and times during which this restriction apply to this user.
The valid days are 'Su', 'Mo', 'Tu', 'We', 'Th', 'Fr', and 'Sa'. In addition, the value 'Al' represents all 7 days, and 'Wk' repre-
sents the 5 weekdays. Times are given as HHMM-HHMM. The ending time may be before the starting time. Days are presumed to wrap at
0000.
/usr/conf/config.aeg
This text file contains the configuration information necessary for radiusd to connect to the ActivEngine, which is the ActivCard
Authentication Server. See comments contained in the example file provided for details.
LOGGING FILES
All logging and accounting files of YARD RADIUS are stored under `/usr/logs'. Accounting files are organized on a per-month and per-year
basis. All files written by Livingston's server are also written by YARD, but it also creates some specific binary files to store the on-
line status of users, and collect users statistics.
It's important to ensure that those files are synchronized with the real status of the clients, to avoid annoying denial-of-service trou-
bles to your users (e.g. in conjunction with a Yard-Simultaneuous-Use attribute). This could happen when one or more clients reboots with-
out sending suitable stop accouting records before. In those cases, YARD has to be killed too and restarted with a `clean up' argument
`-c', in order to reset its internal status.
The logging file structure is as follows:
<year>/user-stats GDBM yearly file
<year>/radlast-XX Binary compact monthly file
<nas>/<year>/detail-XX Livingston-like logging text file
This allows very fast computing of statistics and maintaining on-line status.
BUGS
Bugs? What's a bug?
SEE ALSO
builddbm(8), radlast(1), radlist(1), radtest(1), radwatch(1), radius_attributes(5), gdbm(3)
AUTHOR
Francesco Paolo Lovergine <francesco@yardradius.org>.
A complete list of contributors is contained in CREDITS file. You should get that file among other ones within your distribution and pos-
sibly installed under /usr/docs directory
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 1992-1999 Lucent Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright (C) 1999-2004 Francesco Paolo Lovergine. All rights reserved.
See the LICENSE file enclosed within this software for conditions of use and distribution. This is a pure ISO BSD Open Source License .
NOTES
The configuration of a RADIUS server is an argument too long to deal with it here. Please, refer to the official Livingston documentation,
which includes the RADIUS for UNIX Administrator's Guide. It is freely available at http://www.livingston.com/tech/docs/manuals.html at
the time of this document.
It's a very good point to start with.
1.1 Aug 25, 2004 RADIUSD(8)