FreeRADIUS server and the Simultaneous-Use parameter. 0. INTRODUCTION Lots of people want to limit the number of times one user account can login, usually to one. This is hard to do with the radius protocol; the nature of the accounting stuff is such that the idea the radius server has about the list of logged-in users might be different from the idea the terminal server has about it. However, most terminal servers have an alternative way to get a list of logged-in users. Most support some way through telnet, some have a finger-daemon builtin and a lot of them support SNMP. So if the radius server thinks that someone is trying to login a second time, it is possible to check on the terminal server itself if the first login is indeed still active. Only then access is denied for the second login. 1. PREREQUISITES You need to have perl installed. For SNMP checks, you have 2 options. You can use the `snmpget' program from the cmu-snmp tools. You can probably get precompiled ones, maybe even packaged for your system (Debian/Linux, Redhat/Linux, FreeBSD ports collection etc). The source code is at http://www.net.cmu.edu/projects/snmp/snmpapps/. The Linux-specific version of this is at http://www.gaertner.de/snmp/ The other option is to install the SNMP_Session and BER modules that for example the well known `mrtg' package uses. This is recommended. In that case you need no external snmpget program, checkrad will speak SNMP directly. See http://www.switch.ch/misc/leinen/snmp/perl/ The checkroutine for USR/3Com Total Control racks uses the Net::Telnet module from CPAN, at least version 3.00. If you need that, obtain it from your local CPAN mirror (or see http://www.perl.com/CPAN/). The checkrad.pl perl script will autodetect if that module is installed. 2. USAGE. It works by adding the `check' parameter "Simultaneous-Use" to the entry for a users or DEFAULT in /etc/raddb/users. It should be at least one; it defines the maximum number of users logged in with the same account name. For example: # # Simultaneous use restrictions. # DEFAULT Group == "staff", Simultaneous-Use := 4 Fall-Through = 1 DEFAULT Group == "business", Simultaneous-Use := 2 Fall-Through = 1 DEFAULT Simultaneous-Use := 1 Fall-Through = 1 NOTE!!! The "Simultaneous-Use" parameter is in the "check" A/V pairs, and not in the Reply A/V pairs (it _is_ a check). For SQL, after creating and populating your schema, you should execute the following statement (for MySQL, others may vary): INSERT INTO radgroupcheck (GroupName, Attribute, op, Value) values("dialup", "Simultaneous-Use", ":=", "1"); Once that is done, your users should be limited to only one login at a time. 3. IMPLEMENTATION The server keeps a list of logged-in users in the /var/log/radutmp file. This is also called "the session database". When you execute "radwho", all that radwho really does is list the entries in this file in a pretty format. Only when someone tries to login who _already_ has an active session according to the radutmp file, the server executes the perl script /usr/local/sbin/checkrad (or /usr/sbin/checkrad, it checks for the presence of both and in that order). This script queries the terminal server to see if the user indeed already has an active session. The script uses SNMP for Livingston Portmasters and Ciscos, finger for Portslave, Computone and Ascend, and Net::Telnet for USR/3Com TC. Since the script has been witten in perl, it's easy to adjust for any type of terminal server. There are implementations in the script for checks using SNMP, finger, and telnet, so it should be easy to add your own check routine if your terminal server is not supported yet. You can find the script in the file src/checkrad.pl. You need to set the correct type in the file /etc/raddb/naslist so that checkrad KNOWS how it should interrogate the terminal server. At this time you can define the following types: type Vendor Uses method needs Need naspasswd ==== ====== =========== ===== ============== ascend Lucent SNMP SNMP No bay Nortel finger finger command No cisco Cisco SNMP SNMP Optional [1] computone Computone finger finger command No cvx Nortel SNMP SNMP No digitro Digitro rusers rusers command No livingston Livingston SNMP SNMP No [2] max40xx Lucent finger finger command No netserver USR/3com telnet CPAN Net::Telnet Yes pathras Cyclades telnet CPAN Net::Telnet Yes patton Patton SNMP SNMP No portslave ? finger finger command No pr3000 Cyclades SNMP snmpwalk command No pr4000 Cyclades SNMP snmpwalk command No tc USR/3com telnet CPAN Net::Telnet Yes usrhyper USR/3com SNMP SNMP No [3] versanet VersaNet SNMP SNMP No other none N/A - No [1] In naspasswd file: set username to SNMP, password is community. [2] Needs at least ComOS 3.5, SNMP enabled. [3] Set "Reported Port Density" to 256 (default) "other" means "don't bother checking, I believe what radutmp says". This really is not recommended, if a user has a "stuck" entry in the session database she will not be able to login again - hence the extra check that "checkrad" does. 4. IF IT DOESN'T WORK Note that you need to add the Simultaneous-Use parameter to the check item (first line), not the reply item, using the ':=' operator. You can edit the `checkrad' perl script and turn on debugging. Then watch the debug file. The `radius.log' file also gives some hints. You can also run the "checkrad" script manually, use the "-d" switch to get debug output on standard output instead of in the log. See also: http://wrath.geoweb.ge/simult.html which has a good discussion of the use of Simultaneous-Use. 5. CAVEATS This solution checks the radutmp file. This file is kept up-to-date from the Accounting records the NAS sends. Since some NASes delay these records for quite some time, it is possible to get a double login by logging in twice at _exactly_ the same time (plus or minus the mentioned delay time), since neither of the logins are registered yet. The solution would be to create a small 1-minute cache of Authentication records, that is also checked for double login attempts. Perhaps in the next version. When implementing this one thing was considered the most important: when trying to detect double logins, we always try to err on the safe side. So in rare cases, a double login is possible but we try never to limit access for a legitimate login. 6. PROBLEMS WITH DROPPED CONNECTIONS Our PM3, with 2 ISDN-30 lines coming into it, had the habit of sometimes dropping connections. In a few cases, the portmaster thought the session was still alive so if the user tried to login again, he or she was denied access. In our case, this problem was caused by a bad PRI line from the phone company. We tried to compensate this by setting the Idle-Timeout to 15 minutes. That way, even if a user did get locked out the portmaster would clear the rogue session within 15 minutes and the user could login again.