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

[Per Hedeland]

"Paul J. Dudley" <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> Server requires autherization and is checked off - username/pw, and
>always has been.

This should be very relevant for the problem, but I can't quite parse
waht you're saying:-) - does "checked off" mean that you have told pan
that the server does *not* require authentication, or that it *does*
require it? If the former, the error could possibly indicate that pan is
doing something wrong.

Anyway, NNTP (which is what pan speaks to the server) is a very simple,
text-based protocol, so you can do some testing with manual typing into
a telnet client to rule out a pan problem - also giving the transcript
of such a test to the Earthlink support guys should be useful (the
first-line ones probably won't understand even what you're doing, but if
there is some intelligence behind them, they should be able to make use
of it). So, here's a session with a server that *does* require auth:

$ telnet news.supernews.com 119
Trying 216.168.3.30...
Connected to news.supernews.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
200 Supernews server ready - posting allowed
group news.software.readers
480 authentication required
authinfo user <username>
381 PASS required
authinfo pass <password>
281 authentication succeeded
group news.software.readers
211 82529 149881 232409 news.software.readers group selected
quit
205 closing connection - goodbye!
Connection closed by foreign host.

Here I'm typing the telnet command - note the port number at the end!,
the server responses always start with a 3-digit number, and I'm typing
the intervening NNTP commands (replacing <username> and <password> with
the actual things of course). You can do this on Linux/Unix or Windows,
but the former is probably preferrable, since with the standard Windows
telnet client you'll have to type the NNTP commands blindly.

If your server doesn't give the 480 response to the first 'group'
command, but instead the 211 that I get after authentication, your
server *doesn't* require authentication, and the problem is with pan
(most likely with your configuration of pan), and Earthlink probably
can't help you.

On the other hand, if you get something like the above, but the 502
response at some point (most likely after the 'authinfo pass' command),
the problem is with Earthlink, and there is nothing pan can do to fix
it. E.g. if I type the wrong password above, I get this:

381 PASS required
authinfo pass notmypassword
502 invalid username or password; see [snip]
Connection closed by foreign host.

- which is to be expected. If you are sure that you're giving the
correct username and password, a 502 response rambling about a Radius
server that the end-user can't know anything about is *not* to be
expected.

--Per Hedeland