Stale sessions and simultaneous use issue

[Josip Almasi]

On 04/15/2014 01:09 PM, Fernando Pizarro wrote:
> Hi all!
>
> I had configured MySQL to store sessions of the users and I have a lots
> of records with wrong acctsessiontime value because NAS are sent
> Accounting On/Off packets and the database is update with the actual
> timestamp.

Values in acctsessiontime, acctstarttime, acctstoptime etc. are all send 
by NAS, they are not not generated by freeradius.
(Acct-Session-Time attribute and such)

> I change deletestalesessions = no in sql.conf but the database is update
> too. What is the function of this parameter?

IIRC, records of such sessions will be overriden (sql update), so no new 
inserts will occur.
However, how it works, depends on unique session id, the one in sql 
where condition rather than one sent by NAS.

I have a hunch you mixed up that unique id:)
Then you get updates on existing records and possibly override 
acctsessiontime.

> There are some attribute to avoid stale sessions? I remember
> Idle-Timeout attribute but if the NAS isn't live the server never kill
> that session right?

Right.

Again, first you need a way to identify user. Username is a good start;)
Then, sort all user's sessions by acctstarttime.
Only last one can have null acctstoptime.

However, be very careful before deleting all other stale sessions.
For even with acctstoptime empty, their acctsessiontime, bytesthis and 
octetsthat may and should get updated with interim packets.
IOW, they stil may provide useful information for billing.

Regards...