Basic principles

Adhere to the principles established in Chapter 3, Getting Started with FreeRADIUS of the book in order to avoid unintended consequences. The rules were as follows:

• Do as little as possible—the default configuration should work as is.
• Do not edit the default configuration files until you understand their purpose.
• When you make changes, make a backup of the configuration beforehand and change one item at a time.
• Confirm that the changes work as intended by running FreeRADIUS in debug mode and carefully observing the output during various scenarios.

It is a good idea to create a backup of the FreeRADIUS configuration directory before you change anything. When one is under pressure, one tends to violate the principles advocating small changes or well understood configurations. Having a clean configuration to fall back on again can be a sanity check. The flip side is also true. Not having a clean configuration to fall back on means the one constant you should have relied...