FR 3.0 on *shiver* Windows? ;-)

Phil Mayers p.mayers at imperial.ac.uk
Wed Jul 17 15:40:13 CEST 2013


On 17/07/13 14:15, John Dennis wrote:
> On 07/16/2013 04:16 PM, stefan.paetow at diamond.ac.uk wrote:
>> I know, I know... There once was a Windows version of FR...
>>
>> Shall we try to build FR 3.0 on Windows? ;-)
>
> Perhaps the real question is why. These days the concept of having to
> build software for a particular OS just because that's the installed OS
> has largely disappeared. We now live in a world of virtual machines. If
> you happen to have a windows box but want to run FreeRADIUS on it then
> the path of least resistance is to simply spin up a Linux VM on your
> Windows box and run FreeRADIUS in the Linux VM where it will run in it's
> own familiar environment quite happily blissfully unaware it's being
> hosted on Windows.

I agree with this position, but I know of people in the .ac.uk community 
who have a *strong* resistance to this model, and they essentially 
cannot be reasoned with on the topic.

So there are definitely sites who would run FreeRADIUS if it ran on 
windows, but not via a VM appliance. Maybe not many, but they exist.

There might also be one tangible advantage - a version of FreeRADIUS 
running on windows could use the Lsa APIs to authenticate MSCHAP rather 
than Samba/ntlm_auth, which could be advantageous in some 
configurations. Samba is hardly trouble-free in this role...


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