Why is radtest not working, and returning an error about radclient?

Question

I've installed Free Radius following these steps:

1. sudo apt install freeradius freeradius-config
2. sudo sed -i '1s/^/steve Cleartext-Password := "testing"\n/' /etc/freeradius/3.0/users
3. sudo systemctl stop freeradius.service
4. sudo usermod -a -G ssl-cert freerad
5. sudo freeradius -X
6. sudo chmod 744 /usr/local/etc/raddb/dictionary
7. radtest -x steve testing 127.0.0.1 10 testing123

The last command run (number 7, radtest) fails with this output:

$ radtest -x steve testing 127.0.0.1 10 testing123
radclient:: Unknown attribute "User-Name" requires a hex string, not "steve"
radclient: Nothing to send.

I have googled for this, and the best I can find, is a mailing list (https://freeradius-users.freeradius.narkive.com/pFaFTRpq/beginner-need-help) that was saved on multiple sites. The user has the same problem as me, but gets destracted and tries to fix the rest of his issues without ever coming back to this one. It's a very frustrating read, and I highly discourage you from it.

How can I fix my setup, so I can test freeradius?

Answer 1

You're getting the above error because radclient can't find the dictionaries so it's treating all attributes as raw octet (binary) types. Check that the dictionaries are actually present /usr/share/freeradius and radclient as permission to access them.