RFC 2866 - Accounting ON / Accounting OFF packets

[A.L.M.Buxey at lboro.ac.uk]

Hi,

> Quite. I believe you'll probably run into problems with MyISAM if you've 
> got a loaded RADIUS server. It's taken around 6 months for serious issues 
> to occur. We switched over to some new more 'chatty' firmware on our access 
> points, and that seemed to push it over the edge. Database equivalent of 
> gridlock, all connections used, authentications starting to fail, not 
> pretty.
>
> Disabled SQL based Accounting for now as the data is used more for show 
> anyway. Building InnoDB database based around the FR2 schemas.

we hit a similar wall - and decided to stop doing 'live live live!'
accounting - use the SQL_LOG and sqlrelay tool to insert the
accounting updates into the DB as quickly as they can behind the
scenes.  its wrong to tie up the FreeRADIUS threads with the
accounting stuff - as , you pointed out, its a lot of SQL grunt
and that delays everything else.  strangely it is a very sudden
tipping point too...all it takes is that extra few milliseconds
and things go to pot rapidly!

alan