OS X Mavericks not connecting to Debian FreeRADIUS

[Nathan Ward]

> On 12/08/2015, at 11:02, Edward Ulrich <email at edwardulrich.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> I think configuring FreeRadius can be more within the grasp of people who aren’t career sys admins if the instructions were more clear.  For example when finding the value to use as “ipaddr” in clients.conf, the instructions in the config file only mention to use the IP of the client, it does not mention if I should use the LAN IP or the WAN IP of my wireless router, for example.  Now, obviously I would be able to figure that out through trail and error, but when there is a problem someplace else in the chain I want to know for certain that this value has been set exactly to what it needs to be right from the start..  A career systems administrator may already know which value to use but others would not, so why don’t they just give a specific example of using a wireless router in the lengthy docs of the config file and mention the name LAN IP or WAN IP?  Also it is annoying to me how often the wireless router is referred to as the  “client” in all sorts of instructions that I see, it is confusing terminology for the process even if it is technically correct.

That’s true, I mean, why doesn’t the FreeRADIUS documentation include details about the location of the power switch for my routers? A career sys admin would know this, but this is unclear to others.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect that the documentation for one component of your network include details about how the rest of your network is configured, or an introduction to the protocols it uses. Web server documentation wouldn’t say “here’s how HTTP works”, so why should a RADIUS server say “here’s how RADIUS” works?

I’ve often thought that there should be a “for dummies” book though, for people who “want some RADIUS” but don’t really know what that means. Googling “FreeRADIUS for dummies” reveals this, which seems to be good, though I can’t vouch for it as I’ve just skimmed a PDF I saw of it. http://www.amazon.com/FreeRADIUS-Beginners-Guide-Dirk-Walt/dp/1849514089 <http://www.amazon.com/FreeRADIUS-Beginners-Guide-Dirk-Walt/dp/1849514089>

It’s dated, sure, but the concepts are likely to largely be the same. I’d suggest reading that.

Maybe someone has, or wants to, put together some set of end-to-end worked examples with configs etc., but I imagine that that would be a nightmare to support, and there’d be just as many people saying “why don’t your examples cover <corner case>”.

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Nathan Ward