Freeradius disappears after upgrade to 24.04

Support and Help
1

Upgraded from 22.04.05 to 24.04.2 this morning. This broke freeradius. The service was masked and the /etc/freeradius/ directory was missing. Searched the forums here but found nothing on this. Is there a known solution? Otherwise where do I go to report the bug?

The old forums had a topic on freeradius getting nuked but I cannot view it and only page 1 is archived on the wayback machine. It is a real shame Canonical decided to nuke the old forums rather than leave them in archive mode.
https://web.archive.org/web/20241105121737/https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2500769

2

Can’t help you with your Freeradius issue but if you do a Google or DDgo search with the two keywords freeradius,ubuntuforums you will get several hits on Freeradius threads in the old forums.

4

I did search first and there is no resolution for this issue in 24.04 other than an old ubuntu forums post of which the old site does not allow me as a newcomer to sign in and look at. Guess I’ll just dig through launchpad.

5

Was this a standard do-release-upgrade ?

If yes, it should not have, in theory, done what you are reporting.

Open a terminal and file a bug:
ubuntu-bug freeradius

6

Did the major version change? Does it still use the same config file layout? I upgraded FreeRadius a while ago and the configuration layout was vastly different. There was 2 options, one was to fudge the config to use the old files with symlinks and junk or to just reconfigure in the new way. The account database is the same so you can use that.

7

Thanks rubi - yes it was a standard do-release-upgrade. I will try the upgrade again and use ubuntu-bug

@Actionparsnip
I’ll double check the freeradius versions - all I know is the /etc/freeradius directory is completely gone and the service was masked and stopped. Prior to the OS upgrade everything was intact and worked fine.

8

Ok did the upgrade again. Discovered the files are disappearing because at the end of the install Ubuntu marks freeradius-common and freeradius-config as obsolete. I didn’t check the details before, so this time I did not remove the obsolete packages. That kept the config files intact. However it does looks like quite a few config files change as you said (freeradius 3.0.26 → 3.2.5). freeradius is still masked and not working but at least the config files in place. Will troubleshoot the broken configs since the release upgrade.

9

You can check the status and unmask:
sudo systemctl status freeradius

If masked, then unmask:
sudo systemctl unmask freeradius

Then enable and restart:

sudo systemctl enable freeradius
sudo systemctl restart freeradius

Check status again afterwards.

10

Edit: Seems Ubuntu might have still removed freeradius during the install

tried that but it gives an exited status rather than running - that’s what happened even with the configs blown out previously.

sudo systemctl status freeradius
● freeradius.service - LSB: Radius Daemon
Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/freeradius; generated)
Active: active (exited) since Thu 2025-06-12 08:42:22 PDT; 3s ago
Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
Process: 1515 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/freeradius start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
CPU: 9ms

journalctl -xeu freeradius.service has no errors

sudo apt show freeradius -a
Package: freeradius
Version: 3.2.5+dfsg-3~ubuntu24.04.3
Priority: optional
Section: net
Origin: Ubuntu
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com
Original-Maintainer: Debian FreeRADIUS Packaging Team pkg-freeradius-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org
Bugs: OpenID transaction in progress
Installed-Size: 2,623 kB
Provides: radius-server
Depends: freeradius-common, freeradius-config, libfreeradius3 (= 3.2.5+dfsg-3~ubuntu24.04.3), perl:any, libc6 (>= 2.38), libcrypt1 (>= 1:4.1.0), libct4 (>= 0.64), libgdbm6t64 (>= 1.16), libjson-c5 (>= 0.15), libpam0g (>= 0.99.7.1), libperl5.38t64 (>= 5.38.2), libreadline8t64 (>= 6.0), libsqlite3-0 (>= 3.7.15), libssl3t64 (>= 3.0.0), libsystemd0, libtalloc2 (>= 2.0.4~git20101213), libwbclient0 (>= 2:4.2.1+dfsg)
Recommends: freeradius-utils
Suggests: freeradius-krb5, freeradius-ldap, freeradius-mysql, freeradius-postgresql, freeradius-python3, snmp
Homepage: http://www.freeradius.org/
Download-Size: 696 kB
APT-Sources: Index of /ubuntu noble-updates/main amd64 Packages
Description: high-performance and highly configurable RADIUS server
FreeRADIUS is a high-performance RADIUS server with support for:

  • Authentication by local files, SQL, Kerberos, LDAP, PAM, and more.
  • Powerful policy configuration language.
  • Proxying and replicating requests by any criteria.
  • Support for many EAP types; TLS, PEAP, TTLS, etc.
  • Many vendor-specific attributes.
  • Regexp matching in string attributes.
    and lots more.

Package: freeradius
Version: 3.2.5+dfsg-3~ubuntu24.04.1
Priority: optional
Section: net
Origin: Ubuntu
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com
Original-Maintainer: Debian FreeRADIUS Packaging Team pkg-freeradius-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org
Bugs: OpenID transaction in progress
Installed-Size: 2,623 kB
Provides: radius-server
Depends: freeradius-common, freeradius-config, libfreeradius3 (= 3.2.5+dfsg-3~ubuntu24.04.1), perl:any, libc6 (>= 2.38), libcrypt1 (>= 1:4.1.0), libct4 (>= 0.64), libgdbm6t64 (>= 1.16), libjson-c5 (>= 0.15), libpam0g (>= 0.99.7.1), libperl5.38t64 (>= 5.38.2), libreadline8t64 (>= 6.0), libsqlite3-0 (>= 3.7.15), libssl3t64 (>= 3.0.0), libsystemd0, libtalloc2 (>= 2.0.4~git20101213), libwbclient0 (>= 2:4.2.1+dfsg)
Recommends: freeradius-utils
Suggests: freeradius-krb5, freeradius-ldap, freeradius-mysql, freeradius-postgresql, freeradius-python3, snmp
Homepage: http://www.freeradius.org/
Download-Size: 696 kB
APT-Sources: http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu noble-security/main amd64 Packages
Description: high-performance and highly configurable RADIUS server
FreeRADIUS is a high-performance RADIUS server with support for:

  • Authentication by local files, SQL, Kerberos, LDAP, PAM, and more.
  • Powerful policy configuration language.
  • Proxying and replicating requests by any criteria.
  • Support for many EAP types; TLS, PEAP, TTLS, etc.
  • Many vendor-specific attributes.
  • Regexp matching in string attributes.
    and lots more.

Package: freeradius
Version: 3.2.3+dfsg-2build7
Priority: optional
Section: net
Origin: Ubuntu
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com
Original-Maintainer: Debian FreeRADIUS Packaging Team pkg-freeradius-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org
Bugs: OpenID transaction in progress
Installed-Size: 2,489 kB
Provides: radius-server
Depends: freeradius-common, freeradius-config, libfreeradius3 (= 3.2.3+dfsg-2build7), libc6 (>= 2.38), libcrypt1 (>= 1:4.1.0), libct4 (>= 0.64), libgdbm6t64 (>= 1.16), libjson-c5 (>= 0.15), libpam0g (>= 0.99.7.1), libperl5.38t64 (>= 5.38.2), libreadline8t64 (>= 6.0), libsqlite3-0 (>= 3.7.15), libssl3t64 (>= 3.0.0), libsystemd0, libtalloc2 (>= 2.0.4~git20101213), libwbclient0 (>= 2:4.2.1+dfsg)
Recommends: freeradius-utils
Suggests: freeradius-krb5, freeradius-ldap, freeradius-mysql, freeradius-postgresql, freeradius-python3, snmp
Homepage: http://www.freeradius.org/
Download-Size: 658 kB
APT-Sources: Index of /ubuntu noble/main amd64 Packages
Description: high-performance and highly configurable RADIUS server
FreeRADIUS is a high-performance RADIUS server with support for:

  • Authentication by local files, SQL, Kerberos, LDAP, PAM, and more.
  • Powerful policy configuration language.
  • Proxying and replicating requests by any criteria.
  • Support for many EAP types; TLS, PEAP, TTLS, etc.
  • Many vendor-specific attributes.
  • Regexp matching in string attributes.
    and lots more.

Package: freeradius
Version: 3.0.26~dfsg~git20220223.1.00ed0241fa-0ubuntu3.4
Status: deinstall ok config-files
Priority: optional
Section: net
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com
Original-Maintainer: Debian FreeRADIUS Packaging Team pkg-freeradius-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org
Config-Version: 3.0.26~dfsg~git20220223.1.00ed0241fa-0ubuntu3.4
Installed-Size: 2,370 kB
Provides: radius-server
Depends: freeradius-common, freeradius-config, libfreeradius3 (= 3.0.26~dfsg~git20220223.1.00ed0241fa-0ubuntu3.4), lsb-base, libc6 (>= 2.34), libcrypt1 (>= 1:4.1.0), libct4 (>= 0.64), libgdbm6 (>= 1.16), libpam0g (>= 0.99.7.1), libperl5.34 (>= 5.34.0), libreadline8 (>= 6.0), libsqlite3-0 (>= 3.7.15), libssl3 (>= 3.0.0~~alpha1), libsystemd0, libtalloc2 (>= 2.0.4~git20101213), libwbclient0 (>= 2:4.2.1+dfsg)
Recommends: freeradius-utils
Suggests: freeradius-krb5, freeradius-ldap, freeradius-mysql, freeradius-postgresql, freeradius-python3, snmp
Homepage: http://www.freeradius.org/
Download-Size: unknown
APT-Sources: /var/lib/dpkg/status
Description: high-performance and highly configurable RADIUS server
FreeRADIUS is a high-performance RADIUS server with support for:

  • Authentication by local files, SQL, Kerberos, LDAP, PAM, and more.
  • Powerful policy configuration language.
  • Proxying and replicating requests by any criteria.
  • Support for many EAP types; TLS, PEAP, TTLS, etc.
  • Many vendor-specific attributes.
  • Regexp matching in string attributes.
    and lots more.

sudo dpkg -l | grep “freeradius”
rc freeradius 3.0.26~dfsg~git20220223.1.00ed0241fa-0ubuntu3.4 amd64 high-performance and highly configurable RADIUS server
ii freeradius-common 3.2.5+dfsg-3~ubuntu24.04.3 all FreeRADIUS common files
ii freeradius-config 3.2.5+dfsg-3~ubuntu24.04.3 amd64 FreeRADIUS default config files

11

Yup it removed freeradius during the upgrade

sudo apt install freeradius
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree… Done
Reading state information… Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
g+±11 gcc-12-base irqbalance isc-dhcp-client isc-dhcp-common libaio1 libappstream4 libarchive13t64 libblas3 libbpf0 libcbor0.8 libdaxctl1 libdns-export1110 libfwupd2 libgcab-1.0-0 libgpgme11t64 libgusb2 libicu70 libisc-export1105
libjcat1 libjson-glib-1.0-0 libjson-glib-1.0-common libldap-2.5-0 liblinear4 liblua5.3-0 libmpdec3 libndctl6 libnetplan0 libnsl-dev libpcre3 libperl5.34 libplist3 libpmem1 libpython3.10 libpython3.10-dev libpython3.10-minimal
libpython3.10-stdlib libssh2-1t64 libstdc+±11-dev libtevent0t64 libtiff5 libtirpc-dev libunistring2 linux-headers-5.15.0-135 linux-headers-5.15.0-135-generic linux-image-5.15.0-135-generic linux-modules-5.15.0-135-generic
linux-modules-extra-5.15.0-135-generic lua-lpeg nmap-common perl-modules-5.34 python3-lib2to3 python3.10 python3.10-dev python3.10-minimal ubuntu-advantage-tools
Use ‘sudo apt autoremove’ to remove them.
The following additional packages will be installed:
freeradius-utils ibverbs-providers libfreeradius3 libibverbs1 libnl-route-3-200 libpcap0.8t64
Suggested packages:
freeradius-krb5 freeradius-ldap freeradius-mysql freeradius-postgresql freeradius-python3
The following NEW packages will be installed:
freeradius freeradius-utils ibverbs-providers libfreeradius3 libibverbs1 libnl-route-3-200 libpcap0.8t64
0 upgraded, 7 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,797 kB of archives.
After this operation, 6,091 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

12

Your old configs may still be around due to the “rc” part of your last command. If not, just restore from backups