sql failover

[Alan DeKok]

On May 14, 2017, at 8:38 PM, Richard J Palmer <richard at merula.net> wrote:
> This may be a simple question but I am a little stuck.
> 
> We are using mssql as a backend for a radius server - this generally works fine.
> 
> A new mirror server was recently installed and I am trying to create redundancy within freeradius - However I have a problem to which I am not sure of the answer
> 
> I have created sql1 and sql2 One pointing to the primary server - the second to the backup
> 
> the config loads OK etc however with the current mirror setup only one of the two SQL servers will allow the radius databases to be accessed. The other when connected gives 'Database 'radius' cannot be opened. It is in the middle of a restore.' At this point the radius server stops loading rather than using the working SQL connection.

  You can set "start = 0" in the SQL module configuration.  This is documented in the comments in the SQL module, for the "start" configuration.

  But it's generally a bad idea to have your system lie to FreeRADIUS.  If you want fail-over, do it in FreeRADIUS.  *Don't* do it somewhere else, and then also try to do it in FreeRADIUS.  That's a recipe for disaster.

  The two systems can get out of sync, and then the "redundant" solution will end up causing problems instead of solving them.

> IF I use the odbc driver I can set the radius database to be blank AND set the table names to be radius..<table name> BUT If I leave the database name blank in the freetds driver I get 'rlm_sql_freetds: Server msg from "<Server Name>": severity(102), number(15), origin(1), layer(1), procedure "none": Incorrect syntax near ';'.'  Which I assume is from when it is trying to select the database.

  Sounds like and ODBC syntax error to me.

> Can you confirm if there is a way to work with the current SQL setup ?

  Let FreeRADIUS do fail-over if you want it to do fail-over.

  Extra layers between FR and SQL just causes problems 99% of the time.

  Alan DeKok.