[Help-gnu-radius] Password on a MySQL Server

[Mario - Firewalls]

Hi there,
I'm trying to use GNU-Radius with MySQL, so I realized that the passwords 
stored on a mysql server must be encrypted. Does it realy need to be encrypted? 
could it be in cleartext/plaintext ?
If not, how I encrypt the password before storing it ?
I tryied to encrypt with md5sum(from slackware) with MD5,ENCRYPT and DES 
functions of mysql, with functions of PHP(crypt,md5,base64_encode/decode) and I 
did not get it working !

PS: Using md5(php) and after using the function base64_encode I get a supposed 
working string, but MySQL does not accept it on a varchar field, cuz they're 
invalid chars.

Please need help.
Thanks a lot!

Mario Leao.
Firewalls Security Corporation
www.firewalls.com.br

Key fingerprint = C2BA B98D EE25 BEAF E0EF  4AD6 4B75 DDD2 1D74 97C7