Building freeradius against mariadb client library

[Bill Schoolfield]

On 7/21/2023 8:04 AM, Matthew Newton via Freeradius-Users wrote:
> On 20/07/2023 23:21, Bill Schoolfield wrote:
>> On 7/20/2023 5:05 PM, Matthew Newton via Freeradius-Users wrote:
> >>
>>> dpkg-query won't query the repos, so you'll only see things that are 
>>> already installed.
>>
>> Thanks I was using these command interchangeably. Debian is new to me 
>> and it seems there are many commands for getting info on packages.
>
> Understood... I've been using Debian ~25 years and I don't think I've 
> ever used dpkg-query before. Generally you should stick to the 'apt' 
> commands and ignore 'dpkg' until you know what you're doing.
>
>
>>>> I either need the appropriate packages for Debian, or I need to 
>>>> alter the build to use the mariadb library and includes. Perhaps 
>>>> modifying configure.ac to use mariadb_config?
>>>>
>>>> What is the solution here?
>>>
>>>   $ make deb
>>
>> What does this link against?  Ideally I'd like mariadb clients and 
>> the mariadb server on this host only.
>
> Whatever libraries are installed on the system and satisfy the package 
> build dependencies (see debian/control.in). I don't think mysql is 
> even available on Debian 12, so you're safe. If you really want to 
> check then e.g. spin up a Docker instance and build it in there, then 
> the build output will show what's being installed.
>
control.in requires:  default-libmysqlclient-dev | libmysqlclient-dev

I did install default-libmysqlclient-dev and freeradius built w/o error 
and rlm_sql is working.

So I now have mysql and mariadb client libraries on this host. Our 
clients (apps) use the latter, freeradius uses the former to "talk" to a 
mariadb server. While I'm sure there are some differences these should 
be interchangeable. Seems unnecessary or maybe even ugly to have both 
though.

While working this I realized we have the same situation with our perl 
scripts elsewhere that use DBI /DBD. They presently use mysql as well.

Bill


>
>>> or the simplest is to just use the packages we provide from Network 
>>> RADIUS:
>>>
>>>   https://packages.networkradius.com/
>>
>> Considering this. The reason for building was we were a CentOS shop 
>> and the packaged FreeRadius was very old. We also (at the time) had 
>> our own module (written in C). That module has since been retired.
>
> The main reason why we provide packages is because distros don't 
> historically provide very recent FreeRADIUS packages, though the 
> situation is a bit better these days. If you've got no custom modules 
> and want the latest packages, then the NR packages we build should be 
> fine - we build them on every new FR release.
>
> (There are packages for CentOS/RHEL/Rocky etc as well which are also 
> up-to-date, but I fully support your move to Debian :) )
>