Freeradius - radacct session issue

[Pierre Delamotte]

Hi Alan
Thank you for answering
Agreed that the NAS is crappy, but ditching it is not an option for the
moment (it is one of my main Capwap controller), so I have to leave with it.

Knowing that at least the NAS is signalling Freeradius when it is
rebooting, could I consider the option of updating a radacct record
acctuniqueid (I see that the field is defined as Unique Key NOT NULL)
targeted by a stop by setting the value to NULL? What I expect from that is
that Freeradius will create a new radacct record upon reception of a new
accounting packet carrying the same "Accounting Id".

Basically:
- I remove the NOT NULL constraint on acctuniqueid field in radacct table
definition
- I store NULL in the field upon receiving a stop

Should I expect bad side effects?

Best regards
Pierre


On Fri, Mar 9, 2018 at 4:50 PM, Alan DeKok <aland at deployingradius.com>
wrote:

> On Mar 9, 2018, at 9:37 AM, Pierre Delamotte <pierre.delamotte at brightwave.
> co.za> wrote:
> > Issue: I am picking a lot of entries in radacct that seem to have been
> > updated days after session has been closed (recording of the timestamp of
> > an accounting stop reception).
>
>   FreeRADIUS only logs what it receives.  It doesn't invent accounting
> records.
>
>   If a record is logged days after a session was closed, it's because the
> NAS sent an accounting packet days after that session was closed.
>
> > Context: Freeradius (Version 3.0.13 see below) is deployed with a
> front-end
> > called Radiusdesk.
> > Service is provided thru WiFi APs centrally managed (Capwap) by and
> Access
> > Controller (AC) acting as Freeradius client.
> >
> > This AC is regularly performing unattended reboots, hence most likely the
> > replication of Accounting Session Id.
>
>   Ah... the NAS is broken, then.  It should NOT re-use Acct-Session-ID.
> It's 2018 for crying out loud... there's just no excuse for shitty software.
>
> > Any idea why Freeradius would overwrite an entry that has been "closed"?
>
>   If the NAS is lying to the server and re-using Acct-Session-ID, it's
> difficult.  Tho FreeRADIUS adds Acct-Unique-Session-Id in order to deal
> with these issues.
>
>   i.e. the default queries in v3 key off of Acct-Unique-Session-ID where
> possible, instead of Acct-Session-Id.
>
> > and how we could work around that (beside ditching the AC or
> systematically
> > moving the "closed" entries to another table upon reception of
> Acct_Stop)?
>
>   The queries in v3 *should* take care of dealing with normal situations.
>
>   But... if your NAS is broken, moving records to a different table may be
> a good solution.
>
>   That, or throwing the crappy NAS in he garbage, and buying one one that
> works correctly.
>
>   Alan DeKok.
>
>
> -
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