Maintaining a (very) dynamic user list with freeradius

[Jos Vos]

On Sat, Nov 03, 2007 at 02:00:15PM +0100, Bjørn Mork wrote:

> But if RH and you still feel FreeRadius 1.0.1 is the way to go, then I
> assume that RH provides the proper documentation and support for this
> out-dated version.

RHEL4 has freeradius 1.0.1, RHEL5 has 1.1.3.

> But you are of course right: Using RHEL4 compilers and libraries is
> probably going to cause a number of problems too.   Or to be more
> precise:  Using RHEL4 is probably going to cause a number of problems. 
> 
> I would strongly suggest to read this bug report and try to understand
> the implications: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=166873
> 
> Short summary for the impatient: RHEL4 includes a random CVS snapshot of
> mod_perl2, which is neither compatible with mod_perl1 nor mod_perl2,
> since there were major API changes between this CVS snapshot and the
> mod_perl2 release.  This makes it completely unusable in the real world.
> This is not considered a bug.

I agree that some of RH's decisions are arguable, but, in general, having
the policy to release a stable version of a Linux distro every 2 years
and maintain that for 7 years *without interface changes* (in principle)
is a good thing and really needed in many production environments.
Thus (in general -- there are exceptions) packages are not upgraded,
but only patched.

In general, RHELx releases are *much* more stable and better integrated
than bleeding-edge distros.  Although it also has shortcomings, I'ld not
want to maintain large installations using some bleeding-edge distro...

Just to clarify my situation:
In my case, we're talking about an installed base of RHEL4 systems in
a mission-critical environment, using non-standard PC-hardware,
installed at many remote locations throughout the country, so ideally
this should stay working for 5+ years without reinstallation.

But your message is clear and I'll see if I can generate a more recent
version of freeradius on RHEL4.

-- 
--    Jos Vos <jos at xos.nl>
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