Summary

This chapter is large and has covered a lot of matter. With a typical deployment you would probably use one or two user stores. As a summary let's revisit important points on each user store discussed here.

Linux system users

The unix module (rlm_unix) needs access to the /etc/shadow file to be able to read the user's encrypted password. This encrypted password is used by the pap module to authenticate the user. CHAP and MS-CHAP authentication will not work; only PAP authentication works with system users.

SQL database

FreeRADIUS supports various SQL databases. It does this through a combination of a generic SQL module and a database-specific SQL module. The database is used purely as a data store and keeps the same type of data as the users file. A user can belong to one or more groups. This eases management. The User-Profile attribute of a user allows us to assign a profile to a user. Profiles are more flexible than adding a user to a group.

LDAP directory

LDAP can be used...