Syntax of dictionary file

Purpose

It contains a list of dictionary translations which RADIUS will normaly use to parse incoming requests and to generate outgoing responses.
Our radius-Implementation needs it mainly for parsing of the files and for debuggingpurpose. During runtime of the radiusd we need it for knowing the types of the attributes.

Description

The dictionary file resides in the db directory.

Comments are indicated by leading pound sign ('#') characters. All such comment lines are ignored (as are blank lines).

All transactions are composed of Attribute/Value Pairs. The value of each attribute is specified as one of four data <type>s.

Valid <types> include:

string
0-253 octets
ipaddr
4 octets in network byte order
integer
32 bit value in big endian order (high byte first)
date
32 bit value in big endian order - seconds since 00:00:00 GMT, Jan. 1, 1970
The ATTRIBUTE entries consist of four fields: 
   ATTRIBUTE     <attribute-name>    <integerencoding>    <type>
The VALUE entries consist of four fields: 
    VALUE        <attribute-name>    <valuename>          <integer-encoding>
For example: 
              ATTRIBUTE            Framed-Protocol              7
              integer
and 
              VALUE             Framed-Protocol         PPP    1
The dictionary file is read by radius at startup and when­ ever a HUP signal is received by radius. The RADIUS server detects any out-of-date configuration files upon receipt of a Status-Server (or Management-Poll) request and re-reads all the configuration files. This file is maintained by the RADIUS administrator using a text editor.

Remark

The Syntax is the same in the implementations Livingston,Ascend and Merit.
So this page is adapted thom the Merit-Manualpage.