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Acell-ppp Support in RADIUSdesk

Introduction

As of November 2023, RADIUSdesk can centrally manage Accel-ppp on Ubuntu and Raspberry Pi based devices.
This is done by a lightweight agent that interacts with RADIUSdesk.
Each device now has the ability to be configured though a web applet on RADIUSdesk.
The agent also reports back to RADIUSdesk on the status of the service and any active sessions.
The following graphic shows how everything fits together.

The Accel-ppp Server applet can be found under the Other grouping.
It has three sub tabs
- The Servers tab displays all of the Accel-ppp servers which are managed centrally.
- The Profiles tab is used to define various profiles which are associated with one of more servers.
- The New Arrivals lists Accel-ppp servers which reported to RADIUSdesk but which require on-boarding.

Profiles are used to manage the major part of the settings which will be applied to a server.
Settings are dynamically formulated in the reply when the RADISUdesk Accel-ppp agent contacts RADIUSdesk.
The settings for each Acell-ppp server can be divided into three categories.
- Common settings which hardly differ between servers. (This is the bulk of them)
- Unique settings which you might want to tweak should the need arise.
- Specific settings which are required to differentiate one Acell-ppp server from another.

Common settings are stored inside a CakePHP config file. (/var/www/rdcore/cake4/rd_cake/config/AccelPresets.php)

One can define various sets of these common settings, giving each a unique name.
We refer to them as Base Configs.
There is one already called Default.
The keys of these configs maps to sections of the /etc/accel-ppp.conf file.
Should you wish to add or modify these configs; it can be done by editing /var/www/rdcore/cake4/rd_cake/config/AccelPresets.php.
The various configs will then appear as a select-able Base Config list when managing profiles.
When one select a Base Config from the list; the values in the GUI are populated from the selected Base Config.
You can then edit those populated values so they are unique to the profile you are managing.
See screenshot below.

Profiles allow you to override certain values which were specified in the Base Config so that they become unique to that profile.
These include items which might need tweaking for certain environments.
Each of the sections inside the GUI maps to a section in the /etc/accel-ppp.conf file.

This is the final category and one that is specific to an Accel-ppp server in the applet.
An Accel-ppp server needs a mandatory Profile (Unique settings) and then two items which are specific.
- Interface This is the interface name on the server where we want to run the PPPoE servie on.
- NAS Identifier This is the specific identifier used to identify the Accel-ppp server on RADIUS.

Although the Servers tab is first we started with the Profiles tab since we need to have a Profile available which we can associate with a server.
Each server has the following mandatory fields.
- Name A unique name to identify the server with.
- MAC Address This has to match the MAC Address of the interface on the device running Acell-ppp and is used as a identity field.
- Server Profile This was covered earlier in this document.
- Interface The name of the interface on which you plan to run the PPPoE service on (using Acell-ppp)
- NAS Identifier Used to identify the server when interacting with the RADIUS server.