Hi all, I want to advise everyone of a debian-specific problem using $ENV{HOSTNAME} in freeradius 2 config files : It seems environment passed to freeradius at startup does not have HOSTNAME defined. In fact, it seems only a subset of environment variables are passed to executables ... To be able to use this, we have to explicitly set HOSTNAME environment BEFORE launching freeradius. For example : freeradius -X will expand $ENV{HOSTNAME} to empty string HOSTNAME=`hostname` freeradius -X will expand $ENV{HOSTNAME} to correct value ... in /etc/freeeradois/init.d, you could use this : export PATH="${PATH:+$PATH:}/usr/sbin:/sbin" ### this is present in original export HOSTNAME="`hostname`" ### this has to be added to access $ENV{HOSTNAME} Please note : other debian base distro as Ubuntu show same issue. Best regards Fred