Supervise Radiusd

Supervising the Radiusd Daemon 0.

INTRODUCTION We all hope that our radius daemons won't die in the middle of the nite stranding customer and beeping beepers. But, alas, it's going to happen, and when you least expect it. That's why you want a another process watching your radius daemon, restarting it if and when it dies. This text describes how to setup both the free radius daemon so that it is automatically restarted upon death. To do this, we'll use either Dan Bernstein's 'daemontools' package or the inittab file. Note: The radwatch script that used to be part of this distribution, is depreciated and SHOULD NOT BE USED.

1.

SETTING UP DAEMONTOOLS First, download (and install) daemontools from: http://cr.yp.to/daemontools.html The latest version as of this writing is 0.70. It would be well worth your while to read all the documentation at that site too, as you can do much more with daemontools than I describe here. Next, we'll need a directory for the radius 'service' to use with daemontools. I usually create a dir '/var/svc' to hold all my daemontool supervised services. Ie: # mkdir /var/svc # mkdir /var/svc/radiusd Now we just need a short shell script called 'run' in our new service directory that will start our daemon. The following should get you started: /var/svc/radiusd/run: --------------------#!/bin/sh exec /usr/local/sbin/radiusd -s -f Of course you'll want to make that 'run' file executable: # chmod +x /var/svc/radiusd/run Note, you *MUST* use the '-f' option when supervising. That option tells radiusd not to detach from the tty when starting. If you don't use that option, the daemontools will always think that radiusd has just died and will (try to) restart it. Not good. Now the only left to do is to start the 'supervise' command that came with daemontools. Do that like so: # supervise /var/svc/radiusd

2.

MAINTENANCE WITH DAEMONTOOLS Any maintenance you need to do with almost certainly be done with the 'svc' program in the deamontools package. Ie: Shutdown radiusd: # svc -d /var/svc/radiusd Start it back up: # svc -u /var/svc/radiusd Send HUP to radiusd: # svc -h /var/svc/radiusd Shutdown and stop supervising radiusd: # svc -dx /var/svc/radiusd

3.

SUPERVISING WITH INITTAB This is really pretty easy, but it is system dependent. I strongly suggest you read the man pages for your 'init' before playing with this. You can seriously hose your system if you screw up your inittab. Add this line (or something similar to it) to your inittab: fr:23:respawn:/usr/local/sbin/radiusd -f -s &> /dev/null Now all that's left is to have the system reread the inittab. that's done with one of the following:

Usually

# telinit Q # init q Now you should see a 'radiusd' process when you issue a 'ps'. If you don't, try to run the radiusd command you put in inittab manually. If it works, that means you didn't tell the system to reread inittab properly. If it doesn't work, that means your radius start command is bad and you need to fix it. 4.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Document author: Jeff Carneal daemontools auther: Dan Bernstein Further daemontool notes (below): Antonio Dias Radwatch note: Andrey Melnikov

5.

FURTHER DAEMONTOOLS NOTES Here are some notes by Antonia Dias sent to the free radius mailing list. Some of you may find this useful after reading the above and the docs for daemontools. ------------------------------------------------------------------------daemontools instructions

I am running radiusd under supervise from daemontools without problems. The only thing I am missing right now is an option to force radiusd to send log to stderr so I can manage logs better with multilog (also included in daemontools package). Here is the procedure I've been following (for Cistron RADIUS): root@storm:~> root@storm:~> root@storm:~> root@storm:~> root@storm:~> root@storm:~> root@storm:~>

groupadd log useradd -g log log mkdir /etc/radiusd mkdir /etc/radiusd/log mkdir /etc/radiusd/log/main chmod +t+s /etc/radiusd /etc/radiusd/log chown log.log /etc/radiusd/log/main

Here are the contents of run files from /etc/radiusd and /etc/radiusd/log root@storm:~> cd /etc/radiusd root@storm:/etc/radiusd> cat run #!/bin/sh exec 2>&1 exec /usr/sbin/radiusd -fyzx root@storm:/etc/radiusd> cd /etc/radiusd/log root@storm:/etc/radiusd/log> cat run #!/bin/sh exec setuidgid log multilog t ./main To make service wake-up do: root@storm:~> ln -sf /etc/radiusd /service Hang-up (to reload config) it using: root@storm:~> svc -h /service/radiusd Disable (down) it using: root@storm:~> svc -d /service/radiusd Reenable (up) it using: root@storm:~> svc -u /service/radiusd -Antonio Dias