Syslog HOWTO

For the example we will be using local1 as the facility.

We will discuss the different priorities with regard to the types of messages that are produced.

Keep in mind that the file locations may be different for your distribution.

The process to get FreeRADIUS to start using syslog is fairly straight forward. The basic steps are:

• Modify /etc/syslog.conf
• Restart the syslog daemon
• Modify /etc/raddb/radiusd.conf
• Start radius with the -l syslog and -g <facility>

Modify /etc/syslog.conf

Radius logging choices - Commented lines are not required:

# .=notice will log only authentication messages (L_AUTH)
#local1.=notice                     /var/log/radius/radius-notice.log
# .=err will log only module errors for radius
#local1.=err                         /var/log/radius/radius-errors.log
# .* will log all messages in the same log file
local1.*                                /var/log/radius/radius.log

Restart the syslog daemon

On the distro we use it is - services restart sysklogd * RedHat - service syslog restart * Ubuntu - ? * FreeBSD - /etc/rc.d/syslogd restart

Modify /etc/raddb/radiusd.conf

Set the following options:

logdir = syslog
log_destination = syslog

Because of the logdir entry above, you must locate all references to ${logdir}, comment the line out and replace it with an absolute path. There must be better ways to do this, but it isn't immediately obvious.

Start radius with the -l syslog and -g <facility>

Putting these options in the startup script is different for each distribution.

• Ours is in /etc/sysconf/options/radiusd
• Redhat - ?
• Ubuntu - ?

Syslog Priorities

There are 8 different priorities for syslog - debug, info, notice, warning, err, crit, alert, emerg.

• debug - ?
• info - ?
• notice - authentication messages
• warning - ?
• err - radius errors
• crit - ?
• alert - ?
• emerg - ?