Re: [Help-gnu-radius] Long startup time

[Gerald]

On Mon, 24 Nov 2003, Greg G wrote:

>    It's a really large users (~22500 users) file.  How could I have less
> than one entry per user anyway?

*cringe* Ouch. Your setup is painful to think about. :-)

Ok, first thing I recommend you do is move those users to a database of
your choice. mysql takes no time to install and is pretty quick to catch
on to. If you need help with setting up mysql or moving users into the
database, out of kindness to the list I will help you off list for stuff
that falls off topic for the list.

If the users have special attributes like IP address or other custom
things those can be put in an attrib database.

This would simplify your users file to:
***Begin
DEFAULT Auth-Type = SQL,
                Simultaneous-Use = 1
        Service-Type = Framed-User,
                Framed-Protocol = PPP
***End

You are hitting your first growing pains of using the users file for all
of your users. When you tell radius to reread the configs, it has to parse
from the beginning to the end of the users file to make sure syntax is
correct and all which is unnecessary for most any radius setup. If you
move your users to a database, then rereading config changes takes mere
seconds...and the user information will be called from the database as
needed.

Technically you could move all your users to the system password file and
work around this issue as well, but that is going from a bad situation to
a not as bad situation. Bite the bullet and move your users to a DB. it
will make administration of the users and radius much much easier.

With your current setup, I know of no way to reduce the reload time.

Gerald

P.S. I've worked in a shop where we used the system password file for over
200,000 users and I still kick myself for not taking the initiative
there and moving them to a mysql DB. I was terrified of databases and
didn't want to "mess things up."... I know better now. They moved to an
openldap DB shortly before I left.