Brilliant Thanks Claudia :-))) Putting the shared secret in single quotes 'se\cret' in radclient and in double quotes with the backslash escaped in clients.conf and proxy.conf "se\\cret" worked fine with the radtest and what's more this now works too: Linux VLE <----------->FreeRadius<------------>Microsoft IAS Thank-you !!! Clive Message: 5 Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2007 13:26:35 +0300 From: Claudiu Filip <claudiu@globtel.ro> Subject: Re[2]: Freeradius as a proxy to Windows IAS - reserved characters in shared secret? To: FreeRadius users mailing list <freeradius-users@lists.freeradius.org> Message-ID: <10210589886.20070801132635@globtel.ro> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Hi clive, Wednesday, August 1, 2007, 11:10:41 AM, you wrote:

2) If I use a secret key (similar to the one set on the IAS server) containing characters such as $\[ then the key is rejected and

Character "Escape from Alcatraz", a classic movie with Clint Eastwood.. Be careful with character escaping and bash cli (always use single quotes to pass to radtest what you want). Also avoid ${foo} as a secret client 127.0.0.1 { secret = "\044{prefix}" } radtest gigi kent 127.0.0.1 1 '/radiusd' => OK!! ($prefix = /radiusd) client 127.0.0.1 { secret = "\\testing123" } radtest gigi kent 127.0.0.1 1 '\testing123' => OK radtest gigi kent 127.0.0.1 1 "\testing123" => OK (because bash does not expand \t) radtest gigi kent 127.0.0.1 1 "\\testing123" => OK (because bash expands \\t to \t) radtest gigi kent 127.0.0.1 1 '\\testing123' => NOT ok client 127.0.0.1 { secret = "$\[" } radtest gigi kent 127.0.0.1 1 '$[' => OK client 127.0.0.1 { secret = "$\\[" } radtest gigi kent 127.0.0.1 1 '$\[' => OK Have fun!