We've had some bug reports with not generating the bootstrap certs (correctly) with some of our packages. I investigated and found two issues which we've fixed. I would send a patch but our fix is not generic because it depends on knowing the uid and gid of the server when either the bootstrap script or the Makefile executes. Here are the two issues in summary, then I'll follow with detail: 1) Failure to set openssl's $RANDFILE environment variable. Symptom is "unable to write 'random state'" error. 2) 10 second sub-process timeout when executing bootstrap. Symptom is incomplete cert generation, failure to start. Details ------- 1) /etc/raddb/certs/Makefile creates the random file /etc/raddb/certs/random, it has 0640 permissions. If bootstrap is run directly by root it's ownership is root:root, if bootstrap is run by radiusd -X it's ownership is root:radiusd (because that's the effective uid:gid of radiusd during it's configuration phase) 2) openssl's command line tools use a random file defined by the environment variable $RANDFILE. if $RANDFILE is not defined it defaults to $HOME/.rnd. $RANDFILE is often re-written by the openssl command line tools, when it is re-written it's permissions are forced to 0600. 3) /etc/raddb/certs/Makefile does not set $RANDFILE, thus openssl does not use /etc/raddb/certs/random, rather it uses $HOME/.rnd which because the uid is root is /root/.rnd (on Linux). Also this means the file /etc/raddb/certs/random is never used nor modified during cert generation. This is why we sometimes get "unable to write 'random state'" because if root's homedir already has a .rnd file radiusd does not have permission to write it. See http://www.openssl.org/support/faq.html#USER2 for a complete explanation. 4) When radiusd starts up it needs to read /etc/raddb/certs/random because it configures openssl to use that file as it's random file. Because that file is not modified in item #3 and retains it's 0640 permissions there are no initialization problems. 5) However if the Makefile is modfied to fix the problem defined in item #2 by exporting the environment variable $RANDFILE=/etc/raddb/certs/random then the openssl command line tools will rewrite the file with permissions 0600. This causes radiusd to fail it's initialization because it's running as root:radiusd and cannot read the random file. 6) We DO NOT want to write any file in $HOME, therefore we must set $RANDFILE. Also since the openssl command line tools will generate $RANDFILE there is no point in having the Makefile generate it, that should be removed. After the Makefile is run it must reset the permissions of $RANDFILE to 0640 so radiusd can read it. 7) The cert boostrap program is run by the function radius_exec_program() (in the file src/main/exec.c:74). The function radius_exec_program() has a hardcoded time limit of 10 seconds for child processes. If 10 seconds of elapsed time is exceeded it attempts to kill the child process. Testing the bootstap progam on an i386 virtual machine shows it's execution duration varies widely, between 5 seconds and 30 seconds. In fact the openssl dh parameter generation explictily warns: "This is going to take a long time". Thus it should be expected the bootstrap cert generation could easily exceed 10 seconds of elapsed time. Thus even when all the issues mentioned above are corrected the bootstrap cert generation will sometimes fail and sometimes succeed depending on whether it exceeded the 10 second timeout. This clearly is not acceptable. However it does make sense to limit child processes to 10 seconds during normal server execution. In Fedora and RHEL6 we moved the bootstrap cert generation to the RPM install, thus the bootstrap certs were generated the first time the RPM was installed, running radius -X did not run the cert bootstrap. This is preferable for a variety of reasons: a) You shouldn't need to run the server in debug mode (e.g. radiusd -X) to get it configured to run the first time, this is clumsy and confusing to users. The only reason it might not be confusing to users is the "bootstrap during first debug" behaviour is discussed widely on the FreeRADIUS mailing lists (and probaby appears in documentation someplace). b) It doesn't suffer the permission problems with the random file. But that's just a fortunate artifact because a package install runs as root. We should fix those problems irrespective of where the first bootstrap is run from, in part because sometimes an admin might run the cert generation manually. c) The duration of the bootstrap command is irrelevant when run by the RPM install, it will not be terminated if it exceeds the hardcoded 10 second timeout. Although there is a good argument for generating the temporary bootstrap certs during initial package install this may not an option for the generic FreeRADIUS distribution because it is not package based, rather it's a configure,make,install sequence. However there is no reason the bootstrap cert generation couldn't be moved to the install phase rather than being invoked from a running server in debug mode. The RHEL5 version of freeradius2 was packaged prior to moving the cert bootstrap to RPM install as is currently done in Fedora and RHEL6. Therefore we only were seeing those problems in RHEL5 because the problems did not manifest themselves if cert bootstrap was done during package install. Necessary Fixes: ---------------- Both the boostrap script and the Makefile need to add this export: export RANDFILE=random You might ask why it's necessary to also add it to the Makefile because the Makefile inherits the environment from the bootstrap script. But it should be perfectly O.K. to just run make directly, thus it needs to be defined in both places. After the certs are generated the newly created files need their ownship and permissions fixed. We use a uid:gid of radiusd:radiusd for the server and depend on group permission (gid=radiusd) for files owned by root. Thus after cert generation the following must be done (but this is specific to our installation) chmod 0640 random chown root:radiusd * FWIW, In our case the file ownership and permissions only needed to be fixed if the cert genration was performed manually because when it was done automatically during RPM install it was done like this: if [ ! -e /etc/raddb/certs/server.pem ]; then /sbin/runuser -g radiusd -c 'umask 007; /etc/raddb/certs/bootstrap'

/dev/null 2>&1 fi

Which resulted in the right ownship and permissions (modulo the newly introduced $RANDFILE which now needs it's permission adjusted) HTH, John -- John Dennis <jdennis@redhat.com> Looking to carve out IT costs? www.redhat.com/carveoutcosts/