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RADIUS Test Procedures

Introduction

This document describes how to test your radius server authentication using random usernames and passwords with the radclient program.

Why test?

Many people want to see the difference in efficiency behind the various authentication methods, compilation methods, etc of their radius server. Before now, this was difficult to do efficiently across a large number of users. However, with this document, you’ll be able to test your radius server and determine the best options to use for your system.

Getting started

First thing we have to do is generate a large number of users. You’ll want to do this even if you have a large passwd file you want to use from your system, because the create user script sets up other files you need for testing. So head to the scripts/ directory, and do this:

Make a tmp dir

# mkdir tmp
# cp util/create-users.pl tmp
# cd tmp

Run the script to create 10,000 (or however many you want) random users and passwords

# ./create-users.pl 10000

Output from the script will include several files:
        passwd : A standard passwd file you can append to /etc/passwd
        shadow : A standard shadow file you can append to /etc/shadow
passwd.nocrypt : A file with *unencrypted* users & passes in form "user:pass"
   radius.test : File you'll use as input for radclient
  radius.users : A standard radius 'users' file

So, equipped with lots of users and passwords, there's several methods of
authentication you can test:

  o  System users (Auth-Type:=System)
  o  Local users (Auth-Type:=Local)
  o  Cached system (passwd) users
  o  Others
Before moving on, you will probably want to add /dev/null to /etc/shells temporarily so that default system authentication will work. REMEMBER TO TAKE IT OUT!

Test procedures

System (/etc/passwd) users testing

  1. Append the passwd file from create-users.pl onto your system passwd file:

# cat ./passwd >> /etc/passwd

  1. If you have shadow, append the shadow file onto /etc/shadow

# cat ./shadow >> /etc/shadow

  1. Make sure you have a DEFAULT user similar to the following in your radius `users' file:

DEFAULT Auth-Type:=System
        Reply-Message = "Success!"

  1. Start radiusd

    # /usr/local/sbin/radiusd

  1. Run radclient with radius.test as the input file.

First you need to setup a secret for your local machine in the clients file and use that secret below 
# time /usr/local/bin/radclient -q -s -f radius.test <yourhostname> auth <secret>
The above is to be put all on one line.
Some systems do not have the time command, so you may need to break out the stopwatch instead :)

Take note of the output of radclient. If there were lots of failures, something is wrong. All authentications should succeed.

  1. Take note of the output from the above time command. The output format should be something similar to the following (on linux, this for example only!):

1.72user 0.53system 5:11.34elapsed 0%CPU
(0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k 0inputs+0outputs
(340major+29minor)pagefaults 0swaps

This means it took 5:11 (311 seconds) to authenticate 10,000 users. Simple division tells us this is:

10,000 auths / 311 seconds = 32.1543 auths/second

Local users testing

  1. Copy the radius.users file from the script over your users file. Make sure you do NOT have a DEFAULT entry or you will invalidate this test.

  2. Restart radiusd (kill and restart)

  3. Run radclient (See A-5 above for NOTES on this):

# time /usr/local/bin/radclient -q -s -f radius.test <yourhostname> auth <secret>

  1. Take note of the output from the above time command, and divide the number of auths (10,000 in this case) with the number of seconds it took to complete. See A6 above for more info.

Cached system users

  1. Set cache=yes in your radiusd.conf file

  2. Restart radiusd (ie, kill it and restart, not just a HUP)

  3. Perform the same steps outlined above for testing System users (A)

Other methods

There is no reason why you can’t use some of this to test modules for PAM, SQL, LDAP, etc, but that will require a little extra work on your end (ie, getting the users/passes you generated into the corresponding database). However, by now you should have a good idea of how to test once you do that.

Also, play around with compile options like --with-thread, --with-thread-pool, etc. Run radiusd with -s so it runs one process only, etc etc. Play around with it.

Caveats

The above test procedures make no allowances for users that login with incorrect usernames or passwords. If you want a true test of performance, you should add in lots of bad usernames and passwords to the radius.test file and then re-run radclient with that file as input.

Additionally, these tests make no reference to how the pre-authenticate, post-authenticate, and accounting methods you choose could affect server performance. For example, checking for simultaneous use after authenti- cating the user is obviously going to slow down authenticate performance.

The numbers you get from this test are raw authentications/second in a perfect environment. Do not expect this kind of result in the real world. However, having tested in this manner, you will have a good idea of which authentication methods and compilation options give you the best base to start from, which is key to an efficient server.

Results

I’d really rather not post results because they will vary tremendously with other system-specific configuration. This is exactly the reason you should run tests of this nature, to find what’s best for your system. Good luck!