On Jan 25, 2019, at 2:33 AM, Fekete Tamás <fektom@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to ask help with interpreting proxy.conf file documentation as I found contradiction between two sentences on one place and I have another question regarding response_timeouts variable, also.

The contradiction comes because of these sentences: # If "status_check" below is something other than "none", then # the server will start sending status checks at the start of # the zombie period.

The start of zombie_period means that FreeRADIUS thinks the home server is dead. But since UDP is lossy, it can't *know* that the home server is dead.

And documentation says just few lines below: # These status packets are sent ONLY if the proxying server # believes that the home server is dead.

Yes, that's true.

So my question is that when the status packets start to go out by default? At the starting of dead status or at the starting of zombie status?

Zombie *is* dead. See zombie movies for further explanation.

My second question is in relationship with response_timeouts variable. The documentation says about response_timeouts: # Start "zombie_period" after this many responses have # timed out.

However it raises a question, namely, how long can be the gap between the two timed out response? Can the first one happen at 1pm and the second one at 2pm and Freeradius counts these two together with many successful requests in between, or the two responses must to follow each other in row, or which factors are taken into account?

It means that FreeRADIUS has missed that many responses *in a row*. i.e. all together. When FreeRADIUS is receiving replies from a home server, then the home server isn't dead. And FreeRADIUS doesn't mark it as dead. Alan DeKok.