Re: [Pan-users] Re: 502 rejected by RADIUS: (no message)

[Per Hedeland]

Greg Lee <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>On Thu, 15 Nov 2007 00:22:02 +0100, Rhialto wrote:
>
>> Radius is an authentication server.
>
>Right, and it's a MS Windows thing, of some sort.

It's most definitely not. See http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2865.txt.

>  Probably it manages passwords, or something similar.

An authentication server typically *verifies* user's passwords, of
course this may require some management of same.

>  So a Radius server might be invoked
>by some MS Windows-oriented software if there is some reason to
>think you need to cough up a password, but something went wrong
>when Radius was asked for your password.

No, typically a news server (or POP/IMAP server, or HTTP server, or ...)
that requires authentication might ask the Radius server to verify the
username/password pair entered by the user. 

>Why would you need a password?  Neither of the News servers
>I use require passwords.  Well, maybe you offered a password
>when you (not you personally, actually, Pan) tried to open a
>connection with your News server.  So I suggest you look at
>what you told Pan about this News server to make sure you
>didn't supply some info (like a password) which would lead
>Pan to think it ought to engage in an authentication
>dialogue (unless, of course, it ought to).

Could be a possibility, but as far as I know no NNTP clients (including
Pan) will attempt to authenticate unless prompted by the NNTP server via
a 480 response.

>What could have gone wrong when Radius was asked to supply
>a password for you?  The most obvious thing is that you have
>no Radius server at all.  That would lead to an error.

Per above, Radius servers don't supply passwords, they require that you
supply passwords to them.

>I think Radius servers are things you expect to find on local
>networks, so there is a good possibility that this mistaken
>invocation of Radius is a local problem and has nothing to do
>with Earthlink. 

No.

--Per Hedeland