hi, just to remind people, with version 3 of the FreeRADIUS server, a new feature arrived which was/is called "Conditional modules". TL;DR -sql and -ldap are calls to the SQL and LDAP modules respectively that work if those modules are configured and enabled The conditional modules feature is documented in very few locations , the main reference source in the configuration files being the mods-available/README.rst file (if using a distribution version then I really hope they keep that file present!) this can be found online here: https://github.com/FreeRADIUS/freeradius-server/blob/v3.0.x/raddb/mods-avail... what this feature means is that as the default server ships, the config files have a lots of features ready for use but not active. all you need to do is configure either sql or ldap modules (or both!), link the mods-available to mods-enabled and then the server will read the module config, note that SQL and/or LDAP are configured and then automatically use them - previously if you wanted to use SQL or LDAP, not only did you have to configure the modules but you then also had to try guessing where to stick the 'sql' or 'ldap' calls into the configuration - a nice game of whack-a-mole that many people failed at, sticking the calls into all kinds of places ;-) note, as it says in the documentation , not very useful for production environments because normally by then you will know what modules/options you want and whether you need/want any of those modules...at which point, you comment out the non needed stuff and can convert (or would convert ) -sql into sql etc as you know its configured and you want it. personally, would like to see many other modules become conditional so the server works out of the box and you just configure the modules/features you want, then go through removing all the modules not needed (flagged in debug yellow with "Ignoring module....." ) rather than guessing if something is needed....a final pass would then convert all remaining -module with module. et voila! :) alan