Time for action – authenticating a user with FreeRADIUS

We continue with our exercise from the previous chapter where we authenticate a user defined in the users file. Instead of looking at the feedback of the radtest command, we will now look at the output of the FreeRADIUS server running in debug mode.

1. Ensure you are root in order to edit the users file.
2. Define Alice as a FreeRADIUS test user. Add the following lines at the top of the users file. Make sure the second line is indented by a single tab character.

   "alice" Cleartext-Password := "passme"
       Reply-Message = "Hello, %{User-Name}"

3. Start the FreeRADIUS server in debug mode. Ensure there is not already an instance running by shutting it down through the start-up script. We assume Ubuntu in this instance.

   $> sudo su
   #> /etc/init.d/freeradius stop
   #> freeradius -X
   

4. Authenticate Alice using the following command:

   $> radtest alice passme 127.0.0.1 100 testing123
   

5. The debug output of FreeRADIUS...