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. Usually
that's done with one of the following:

# telinit Q
<or>
# 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:~> groupadd log

root@storm:~> useradd -g log log
root@storm:~> mkdir /etc/radiusd
root@storm:~> mkdir /etc/radiusd/log
root@storm:~> mkdir /etc/radiusd/log/main
root@storm:~> chmod +t+s /etc/radiusd /etc/radiusd/log
root@storm:~> 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