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    Introducing Netgate Nexus: Multi-Instance Management at Your Fingertips.

    pfSense OpenVPN to RADIUS accounting (Acct-Start/Stop) never sent

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved OpenVPN
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    • M Offline
      McMurphy
      last edited by

      Setup

      pfSense CE 2.8.1, OpenVPN remote-access server (server mode, user auth) authenticating
      against an external FreeRADIUS server. Authentication works perfectly.

      Problem

      No RADIUS accounting is ever sent. I need Accounting-Start / Accounting-Stop so the
      RADIUS side can track sessions and release IP-pool leases on disconnect.

      Already verified (so we can skip the basics)

      • The RADIUS server in User Manager > Authentication Servers has the Accounting port set (1813).

      • The generated server config has the hooks:

        client-connect    /usr/local/sbin/openvpn.attributes.sh
        client-disconnect /usr/local/sbin/openvpn.attributes.sh
        
      • Those scripts contain no accounting logic. This returns nothing:

        grep -niE 'acct|account|radius' /usr/local/sbin/openvpn.attributes.sh /usr/local/sbin/ovpn_auth_verify
        
      • A packet capture on the RADIUS server (udp/1813) during a real connect and disconnect
        shows zero accounting packets, while auth on udp/1812 works fine.

      It looks like pfSense's OpenVPN simply does not emit RADIUS accounting (the acct-port field
      seems to be for Captive Portal / IPsec / L2TP only). Older threads imply the same, with the
      only tool (the radiusplugin for OpenVPN) being Linux-only.

      Question

      On current pfSense, is there a supported or known workaround to make OpenVPN send
      Accounting-Start / Accounting-Stop to RADIUS: a custom client-connect /
      client-disconnect script, a package, or an OpenVPN directive? Or is it confirmed
      unsupported, and I should handle session tracking another way?

      Thanks!

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