How to install Radius on a Raspberry Pi

install-radius-manual.md

How to install Radius on a Raspberry Pi

Written by Timo Stankowitz timo.stankowitz@gmail.com on 2018-03-19. The installation was tested on a RPI2 running Raspbian 9.

Note: Radius uses UDP and not TCP

First step: Install Radius

sudo su
apt update
apt upgrade -y
apt install
apt install freeradius -y

Stop radius

systemctl stop freeradius

Second step: Configure Radius

You can find the configuration in: /etc/freeradius/3.0/

Create default (self-sign) certificates

cd certs
chmod +x bootstrap
./bootstrap

Configure who can use the radius server

In this case clients are e.g. Wireless Access Point Controller or Switches with 802.1X and NOT an end user. Meaning that the end user e.g. a Smartphone talks to the client and the clients talks to the actual radius server.

vi clients.conf

You can simply just add one IP or an IP range to the end of the file e.g.:

client client_name {
	ipaddr = 192.168.178.0/24
	secret = someSecretPassword123456
}

The secret is the shared secret between the client and the radius server.

Configure the users

vi users

For testing you can simply uncomment the line starting with bob. This is a (working) dummy user with the password of hello.

Testing the Server

Run freeradius -X and try to authenticate with an user. If it works you can see the result on the screen.

If everything works as expected you can start radius as a service: systemctl start freeradius