[RADIATOR] Log file encoding

[Heikki Vatiainen]

On 17.6.2015 11.10, Tim Jones wrote:

> I've been asked to ensure that the log files created by our Radiator
> instance are using a consistant particular character encoding. As when
> doing some analysis, it has been discovered that some logs are latin1,
> some us-ascii, and some utf-8.

Mostly they should be in us-ascii, but some log messages include binary 
attribute values, output from libraries and other non-Radiator Perl 
modules, Radius messages, etc. and this can cause non-ascii characters 
in logs.

> I cannot find any reference to character encoding within the Radiator
> documentation, but of course all string-type attributes in the RADIUS
> protocol are defined as UTF-8 encoded so I would have expected that of
> the Radiator logs as well.

The RFCs specify UTF-8, but it is not uncommon to see other encodings 
too. For example, a web captive portal may have its login page 
configured to use UTF-8 or ISO-8859-15. When a user logs in, their 
username may be passed unmodified to RADIUS authentication by the 
controller.

> Is there an option supporting this within Radiator, or is it more do
> with with the Perl environment as a whole?

I recommend considering a separate utility to process the logs to your 
log storage system. Especially when you use debug logging, the logs will 
contain non-ascii characters. There's currently no option to make sure 
all characters in log messages are from e.g., us-ascii.

Thanks,
Heikki

-- 
Heikki Vatiainen <hvn at open.com.au>

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