RE: RADIUS Questions

[Garber, Neal]

You didn't give much information regarding your
environment, so some of the responses below are
based upon assumptions: that you manage all devices
that are connecting, that they are joined to your
A/D domain and that you are using the Windows
supplicant.  

You haven't said what version of Windows you
are running and what version of FreeRADIUS
you are running!

> Currently with Windows machines I can't just connect to
> the SSID and enter in a username and password. I have 
> to go and manually add the SSID, modify some settings; 

If you are referring to PEAP vs. TLS, that's a Windows XP
issue. XP defaults to TLS and won't connect automatically
if you are using PEAP.  However, you can push wireless
policy to your Windows devices using A/D group policy
and set this up automatically.

> specifically turning off validating server certificate

This is a bad idea as you could be passing your credentials
to someone else's RADIUS server.  It's best to generate a
certificate signed by an internal Certificate Authority
and require a cert signed by that CA in your 802.1x config.
This too can be pushed to Windows devices as part of your
A/D policy assuming they are joined to your domain and
run Windows.

> turning off automatically use my Windows login, and 
> turning on User or computer authentication mode.

Why do you want to use manual authentication as opposed to
automatic?  If the machines that are connecting are joined
to your A/D domain, you may want to consider using machine
authentication. User authentication, in the current release, doesn't support 
MS-CHAP password change. Also, user authentication with the Windows supplicant 
requires the
presence of cached credentials (because you logon locally 
first and then connect to the wireless network) which may
not match current A/D credentials.

> error messsage was: winbind client not authorized to
> use winbindd_pam_auth_crap. Ensure permissions on 
> /var/cache/samba/winbindd_privileged are set correctly.

Use "sudo wbinfo" or run it as root if you don't use sudo.
That said, wbinfo isn't used by FreeRADIUS to authenticate
to A/D (ntlm_auth is used for PEAP/MS-CHAPv2).


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Re: RADIUS Questions

[Dan]

Garber,

Thanks for your reply.

We do not manage every machine in the building. We allow for users to 
bring in there personal laptops to work and they vary in manufacture and 
OS. We have machines with Windows versions ranging from XP to 7. Same is 
true with Mac OS X, the oldest version we run is 10.4.11 and the newest 
is 10.6.8. We have some Linux clients be these are all hardwired so they 
aren't a concern.


All of the Macs in our building, that is the ones that aren't personal 
machines, are joined to our domain. The few PC machines that we do 
manage are joined to our AD server but I would say that the vast 
majority of the PCs are not managed and not joined to out AD server. All 
windows systems--XP through 7--have to be setup the way I described 
earlier in order for this to work.


I don't think that I'm using the supplicant but I could be wrong. I'm 
running FreeRadius 2.1.7-7.e15 ( I believe this is the latest) with 
freeradius2-krb5-2.1.7-7.e15 and freeradius2-utils-2.1.7-7.e15.


I'm pretty sure I'm using PEAP.

I realize that and I'm going to work on using our wild card cert to 
better secure this. However the question still arises on will our SSL 
cert validate properly on a Windows system. When I initially set this up 
I never saw anything regarding and 802.11x config. After updating I seem 
to remember seeing this config file mentioned.


"Why do you want to use manual authentication as opposed to
automatic?  If the machines that are connecting are joined
to your A/D domain, you may want to consider using machine
authentication. User authentication, in the current release, doesn't support 
MS-CHAP password change. Also, user authentication with the Windows supplicant 
requires the
presence of cached credentials (because you logon locally
first and then connect to the wireless network) which may
not match current A/D credentials."

Like I mentioned above not all, actually few machines, are managed via 
our AD server. I would love to change this but it would require far more 
administrative changes that I'm unable to make.


Dan


Like I mentioned our Windows versions vary from XP to 7.
On 7/26/11 12:30 PM, Garber, Neal wrote:

You didn't give much information regarding your
environment, so some of the responses below are
based upon assumptions: that you manage all devices
that are connecting, that they are joined to your
A/D domain and that you are using the Windows
supplicant.

You haven't said what version of Windows you
are running and what version of FreeRADIUS
you are running!


Currently with Windows machines I can't just connect to
the SSID and enter in a username and password. I have
to go and manually add the SSID, modify some settings;

If you are referring to PEAP vs. TLS, that's a Windows XP
issue. XP defaults to TLS and won't connect automatically
if you are using PEAP.  However, you can push wireless
policy to your Windows devices using A/D group policy
and set this up automatically.


specifically turning off validating server certificate

This is a bad idea as you could be passing your credentials
to someone else's RADIUS server.  It's best to generate a
certificate signed by an internal Certificate Authority
and require a cert signed by that CA in your 802.1x config.
This too can be pushed to Windows devices as part of your
A/D policy assuming they are joined to your domain and
run Windows.


turning off automatically use my Windows login, and
turning on User or computer authentication mode.

Why do you want to use manual authentication as opposed to
automatic?  If the machines that are connecting are joined
to your A/D domain, you may want to consider using machine
authentication. User authentication, in the current release, doesn't support 
MS-CHAP password change. Also, user authentication with the Windows supplicant 
requires the
presence of cached credentials (because you logon locally
first and then connect to the wireless network) which may
not match current A/D credentials.


error messsage was: winbind client not authorized to
use winbindd_pam_auth_crap. Ensure permissions on
/var/cache/samba/winbindd_privileged are set correctly.

Use "sudo wbinfo" or run it as root if you don't use sudo.
That said, wbinfo isn't used by FreeRADIUS to authenticate
to A/D (ntlm_auth is used for PEAP/MS-CHAPv2).


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Re: RADIUS Questions

[John Dennis]

On 07/26/2011 04:10 PM, Dan wrote:

I'm running FreeRadius 2.1.7-7.e15 ( I believe this is the latest)
with freeradius2-krb5-2.1.7-7.e15 and freeradius2-utils-2.1.7-7.e15.


2.1.7 is the latest in RHEL5. 2.1.11 is the latest from the FreeRADIUS 
project (just released a few weeks ago). Fedora has the latest upstream 
2.1.11, but RHEL does not, why? See:


http://wiki.freeradius.org/Red_Hat_FAQ

We've been rebasing FreeRADIUS in the RHEL versions on average every 
other update cycle, no guarantee though. RHEL is generally not amenable 
to software rebases (i.e. changing to a new upstream version) because 
it's in conflict with RHEL's goal of long term stability. But we've got 
special dispensation for FreeRADIUS because of it's high churn rate.


--
John Dennis 

Looking to carve out IT costs?
www.redhat.com/carveoutcosts/
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RE: RADIUS Questions

[Garber, Neal]

> I don't think that I'm using the supplicant but I could 
> be wrong. 

The supplicant is the software on the client device that
manages wireless profiles/connections.  If Windows 
controls the wireless connections (Wireless Zero Config service) then you are 
using the Windows supplicant.

> I'm running FreeRadius 2.1.7-7.e15 ( I believe this is the 
> latest) with freeradius2-krb5-2.1.7-7.e15 and freeradius2-
> utils-2.1.7-7.e15.

2.1.7 is old!  2.1.11 is the latest version of FreeRADIUS..

> I'm pretty sure I'm using PEAP.

This would be obvious in the wireless settings on the
device.  

> I realize that and I'm going to work on using our wild 
> card cert to better secure this. However the question 
> still arises on will our SSL cert validate properly on a 
> Windows system. When I initially set this up I never saw 
> anything regarding and 802.11x config. After updating I seem 
> to remember seeing this config file mentioned.

Windows clients require that certain extensions be present
in the certificate (you can thank Microsoft for that - it's
not a FreeRADIUS issue).  If most of the machines are not joined to your domain 
and are personal devices and you want easy access, you'll want to use a 
certificate signed by a CA
that's in the Windows root CA list.  Just be aware that 
this is not as secure as an internal or self-signed cert. because any 
certificate from the CA you choose would be
accepted (even if it's from someone else's RADIUS server);
but, the alternative is that you would need to distribute 
the CA's cert to each user that wants to connect.  

I can't answer your question regarding whether 
your SSL cert will validate properly on Windows because
you haven't said how it was generated? Is it self-signed?
Is it signed by a CA that's in the root CA list of a
device you were using to test?  Does it include the 
required Windows extensions?  There have been considerable
discussion on the mailing list regarding the creation 
of certs that will work with Windows clients.  Google is
your friend (along with the doc inside the FR files).

> Like I mentioned above not all, actually few machines, are 
> managed via our AD server. I would love to change this but it 
> would require far more administrative changes that I'm unable 
> to make.

Makes sense..

> Like I mentioned our Windows versions vary from XP to 7. 

I thought, but can't verify right now, that starting with
Vista, Windows will connect using PEAP without manual 
wireless configuration (i.e., it doesn't assume TLS 
as a default the way XP does). Perhaps your only issue 
with Vista/7 is that the cert doesn't have the required extensions or isn't 
signed by a CA that's in the root CA 
list of the device?


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