Re: FILE authentication

William Bulley (web@merit.edu)
Sun, 22 Oct 1995 21:27:43 -0400 (EDT)

According to Matt Zimmerman:
>
> I currently use RADIUS (Merit 2.4.4) to authenticate dial-in users with
> Unix-PW, checking against a shadowed password database.
>
> I want to set up a secondary server, but I don't want to allow users to
> login to it. I've seen scattered references to a "FILE" authentication
> method, but I haven't been able to figure out what file it uses for
> lookup, or what its format is (or even how the passwords are encrypted,
> and thus if I can do what I want). Any help?

The FILE type of authentication is part of Merit RADIUS (ver. 2.0 and up).
It uses a file whose syntax matches that of the normal RADIUS users file.
It is identified using a "prefix" (say, foobah) as the third field of the
Merit RADIUS authfile entry for the realm "foo.bah.com" as shown below:

foo.bah.com FILE foobah

Then this would be accompanied by a file named "foobah.users" in the same
directory with the authfile (and the clients, dictionary and users files).

Yes, passwords may or may not be encrypted in either the users file or
the FILE users file (which we call a "realm" file) since 2.3 I think...

> Of course, a reference for features like this would be useful...any
> reference at ALL for the Merit server itself (not the RADIUS protocol)
> would be nice...can't seem to find one in the distribution or at Merit
> anywhere.

The Merit distribution is (supposed to be) self documenting with all the
man pages and ./doc/* files and the README* files and my TUTORIAL. But
I have had some users complain that it is not good enough! Sheesh... ;^)
Be sure to read the header comments in _each_ configuration file!

You can find the Merit distribution at the following URL:

ftp://ftp.merit.edu/radius/releases/radius.*.*.*.tar.{Z,gz}

Start with the INSTALL file first. There are some release notes there,
too, grab them with the tarchives...

I am continually trying to get all the known bugs fixed... :-)

Regards,

web...

-- 
William Bulley, N8NXN              Senior Systems Research Programmer
Merit Network Inc.                 Domain: web@merit.edu
4251 Plymouth Road                 MaBell: (313) 764-9993
Ann Arbor, Michigan  48105-2785    Fax:    (313) 747-3185