Help us improve your experience.

Let us know what you think.

Do you have time for a two-minute survey?

 
 

Tracing General Authentication Service (authd) Events for Troubleshooting

The Junos OS trace operations feature tracks general authentication service operations and records events in a log file. The error descriptions captured in the log file provide detailed information to help you solve problems. The operations and events are those associated with the authd process, which manages the subscriber AAA infrastructure.

By default, nothing is traced. When you enable the tracing operation, the default tracing behavior is as follows:

  1. Important events are logged in a file located in the /var/log directory. By default, the router uses the filename, authd. You can specify a different filename, but you cannot change the directory (/var/log) in which trace files are located.

  2. When the trace log file filename reaches 128 kilobytes (KB), it is compressed and renamed filename.0.gz. Subsequent events are logged in a new file called filename, until it reaches capacity again. At this point, filename.0.gz is renamed filename.1.gz and filename is compressed and renamed filename.0.gz. This process repeats until the number of archived files reaches the maximum file number. Then the oldest trace file—the one with the highest number—is overwritten.

    You can optionally specify the number of trace files to be from 2 through 1000. You can also configure the maximum file size to be from 10 KB through 1 gigabyte (GB). For more information about how log files are created, see the System Log Explorer.

  3. By default, only the user who configures the tracing operation can access log files. You can optionally configure read-only access for all users.

The following topics describe how to configure all aspects of tracing general authentication service operations:

Configuring the General Authentication Service Trace Log Filename

By default, the name of the file that records trace output for general authentication service is authd. You can specify a different name by including the file statement at the [edit system processes general-authentication-service] hierarchy level:

To configure the filename for general authentication service tracing operations:

  • Specify the name of the file used for the trace output.

Configuring the Number and Size of General Authentication Service Log Files

You can optionally specify the number of compressed, archived trace log files to be from 2 through 1000. You can also configure the maximum file size to be from 10 KB through 1 gigabyte (GB); the default size is 128 kilobytes (KB).

The archived files are differentiated by a suffix in the format .number.gz. The newest archived file is .0.gz and the oldest archived file is .(maximum number)-1.gz. When the current trace log file reaches the maximum size, it is compressed and renamed, and any existing archived files are renamed. This process repeats until the maximum number of archived files is reached, at which point the oldest file is overwritten.

For example, you can set the maximum file size to 2 MB, and the maximum number of files to 20. When the file that receives the output of the tracing operation, filename, reaches 2 MB, filename is compressed and renamed filename.0.gz, and a new file called filename is created. When the new filename reaches 2 MB, filename.0.gz is renamed filename.1.gz and filename is compressed and renamed filename.0.gz. This process repeats until there are 20 trace files. Then the oldest file, filename.19.gz, is simply overwritten when the next oldest file, filename.18.gz is compressed and renamed to filename.19.gz.

To configure the number and size of trace files:

  • Specify the name, number, and size of the file used for the trace output, by including the files and size options with the traceoptions statement.

Configuring Access to the General Authentication Service Log File

By default, log files can be accessed only by the user who configures the tracing operation. You can allow all users to read the log file and you can explicitly set the default behavior of the log file.

To specify that all users can read the log file:

  • Configure the log file to be world-readable.

To explicitly set the default behavior, in which the log file can only be read by the user who configured tracing:

  • Configure the log file to be no-world-readable.

Configuring a Regular Expression for General Authentication Service Messages to Be Logged

By default, the trace operation output includes all lines relevant to the logged events. You can refine the output by including regular expressions (regex) that will be matched.

To configure regular expressions to match:

  • Configure the regular expression.

Configuring Subscriber Filtering for General Authentication Service Tracing

Starting in Junos OS Release 14.1, you can apply filters to the general authentication service to limit tracing to particular subscribers or domains. Subscriber filtering simplifies troubleshooting in a scaled environment by enabling you to focus on a reduced set of trace results.

For subscriber usernames that have the expected form of user@domain, you can filter on the user, the domain, or both. You can use an asterisk (*) as a wildcard to substitute for characters at the beginning or end of either term to match a greater number of subscribers.

Note:

You cannot filter results using a wildcard in the middle of the user or domain terms. For example, the following uses of the wildcard are not supported: tom*25@example.com, tom125@ex*.com.

When you enable filtering by username, traces that have insufficient information to determine the username are automatically excluded.

To configure subscriber filtering:

  • Specify the filter.

Consider the following examples of using the wildcard for filtering:

  • Filter results for the specific subscriber with the username, tom@example.com.

  • Filter results for all subscribers whose username begins with tom.

  • Filter results for all subscribers whose username ends with tom.

  • Filter results for subscribers with the username tom at all domains beginning with ex.

  • Filter results for all subscribers at all domains that end with ample.com.

  • Filter results for all subscribers whose username begins with tom at domains that end with example.com.

Configuring the General Authentication Service Tracing Flags

By default, only important events are logged. You can specify which events and operations are logged by specifying one or more tracing flags.

To configure the flags for the events to be logged:

  • Configure the flags.

Change History Table

Feature support is determined by the platform and release you are using. Use Feature Explorer to determine if a feature is supported on your platform.

Release
Description
14.1
Starting in Junos OS Release 14.1, you can apply filters to the general authentication service to limit tracing to particular subscribers or domains.