Documentation question/issue

[Dan M]

> From: Freeradius-Users <freeradius-users-
> bounces+dan.red.beard=gmail.com at lists.freeradius.org> On Behalf Of Alan
> DeKok
> Sent: Monday, October 28, 2024 1:29 PM
> To: FreeRadius users mailing list <freeradius-users at lists.freeradius.org>
> Subject: Re: Documentation question/issue
> 
> On Oct 28, 2024, at 4:26 PM, Dan M <dan.red.beard at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I am trying to upgrade to FreeRADIUS 3.2.6 and Python3 The
> > documentation link at rlm_python3 (and rlm_python for that matter)
> > goes to the "modules" page and there is nothing on the page for python.
> >
> > Is the python doc hiding somewhere?
> 
>   You can see mods-available/python3.  There is no auto-generated HTML
> documentation for the Python module in version 3.x.
> 
> > Maybe also a question.
> > In FR 3.0 it did not actually use the local python (2.x)  installation
> > at all.
> > (unless libraries were added to the PYTHONPATH) Is that still true?
> 
>   See mods-available/python3
> 
>   This is all documented.

Often I find that answer to be true.  Not sufficiently for my questions
today.

There is nothing in that file about what is actually going on inside FR when
using python3.
It only talks about the PYTHONPATH and implementing functions.
And I don't think PYTHONPATH is relevant until python is actually active.

Is this correct: 
Installing freeradius-python add supports for python 3 in FR 3.2.6.
Internally, FR uses libpython3 to create a python environment.
Since the name of libpython3.so is not versioned (beyond 3) FR doesn't need
to know nor does it care which 3.x version is installed.
FR will us what it finds.
(I'm on RHEL 9)

And since it isn't using the python3 command there is no "default" package
path.
If anything is needed from say /usr/lib64/python3.9/site-packages then that
path
has to be added to python_path in mods-config/python3 (or possibly the
system var instead)
I suppose it says that but not quite so explicitly especially for someone
invoking python3 and getting all that for free.

I'm pretty sure there used to be a page that said all this.
And also pretty sure that it is neither in any installed files nor is it
obvious.

So when some info security agent asks me "how does it use the local
installation?"
I can't point to your documentation and say: "like that!"
Because there isn't any.

Would be nice if you had something like that.
Because I will be asked.

Thanks for suffering this 10T user.

> 
>   Alan DeKok.
> 
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