dictionary - RADIUS dictionary file

The master RADIUS dictionary file resides in /etc/raddb/dictionary. It references other dictionary files located in /usr/local/share/freeradius/. Each dictionary file contains a list of RADIUS attributes and values, which the server uses to map between descriptive names and on-the-wire data. The names have no meaning outside of the RADIUS server itself, and are never exchanged between server and clients.

That is, editing the dictionaries will have NO EFFECT on anything other than the server that is reading those files. Adding new attributes to the dictionaries will have NO EFFECT on RADIUS clients, and will not make RADIUS clients magically understand those attributes. The dictionaries are solely for local administrator convenience, and are specific to each version of FreeRADIUS.

The dictionaries in /usr/local/share SHOULD NOT be edited unless you know exactly what you are doing. Changing them will most likely break your RADIUS deployment.

If you need to add new attributes, please edit the /etc/raddb/dictionary file. It's sole purpose is to contain site-local defintions that are added by the local administrator.

Every line starting with a hash sign ('#') is treated as comment and ignored.

Each line of the file can contain one of the following strings

ATTRIBUTE name number type [vendor|options]

Define a RADIUS attribute name to number mapping. The name field can be any non-space text, but is usually taken from RFC2865, and other related documents. The number field is also taken from the relevant documents, for that name. The type field can be one of string, octets, ipaddr, integer, date, ifid, ipv6addr, ipv6prefix, or abinary. See the RFC's, or the main dictionary file for a description of the various types.

The last (optional) field of an attribute definition can have either a vendor name, or options for that attribute. When a vendor name is given, the attribute is defined to be a vendor specific attribute. Alternately, the options may be the a comma-separated list of the following options:

encrypt=[1-3] Mark the attribute as being encrypted with one of three methods. "1" means that the attribute is encrypted with the method as defined in RFC2865 for the User-Password attribute. "2" means that the password is encrypted with the method as defined in RFC2868 for the Tunnel-Password attribute. "3" means that the attribute is encrypted as per Ascend's definitions for the Ascend-Send-Secret attribute.

has_tag Mark the attribute as being permitted to have a tag, as defined in RFC2868. The purpose of the tag is to allow grouping of attributes for tunnelled users. See RFC2868 for more details.

When the server receives an encoded attribute in a RADIUS packet, it looks up that attribute by number in the dictionary, and uses the name found there for printing diagnostic and log messages.

VALUE attribute-name value-name number

Define an attribute value name to number mapping, for an attribute of type integer. The attribute-name field MUST be previously defined by an ATTRIBUTE entry. The value-name field can be any non-space text, but is usually taken from RFC2865, or other documents.. The number field is also taken from the relevant documents, for that name.

When the server receives an encoded value in a RADIUS packet, it looks up the value of that attribute by number in the dictionary, and uses the name found there for printing diagnostic and log messages.

VENDOR vendor-name number [format=t,l]

Define a Vendor Specific Attribute encapsulation for vendor-name to number. For a list of vendor names and numbers, see http://www.iana.org/enterprise-numbers.txt.

The "format=t,l" statement tells the server how many octets to use to encode/decode the vendor "type" and "length" fields in the attributes. The default is "format=1,1", which does not have to be specified. For USR VSA's, the format is "format=4,0", for Lucent VSA's it's "format=2,1", and for Starent VSA's it's "format=2,2".

The supported values for the number of type octets (i.e. the first digit) are 1, 2, and 4. The support values for the number of length octets (i.e. the second digit) are 0, 1, and 2. Any combination of those values will work.

$INCLUDE filename

Include dictionary entries from the file filename. The filename is taken as relative to the location of the file which is asking for the inclusion.

/etc/raddb/dictionary, /usr/share/freeradius/dictionary.*

radiusd(8), naslist(5), RFC2865, RFC2866, RFC2868