RadiusDeck Blog

Practical FreeRADIUS guides: client configuration, troubleshooting, and web-based management with RadiusDeck.

Target site: https://radiusdeck.github.io/. Product repository: https://github.com/radiusdeck/radiusdeck.

Local setup

Install the Ruby version in .ruby-version, Python 3.10 or newer for the link checker, and Bundler 2.6.9. Then run:

gem install bundler -v 2.6.9
bundle _2.6.9_ config set --local path vendor/bundle
bundle _2.6.9_ install
bundle _2.6.9_ exec jekyll serve

Open http://127.0.0.1:4000/. The site uses Jekyll 4.4.1 and local CSS.

Dependencies are recorded in Gemfile.lock, including the Linux CI platform. Both workflows use BUNDLE_FROZEN: 'true' to enforce the lock file. Commit any intentional dependency updates together with the updated lock file.

GitHub Actions are pinned to the commits of these upstream releases: checkout v6.1.0, setup-ruby v1.334.0, upload-pages-artifact v5.0.0, and deploy-pages v5.0.1.

Check the production build

JEKYLL_ENV=production bundle _2.6.9_ exec jekyll build --strict_front_matter
python3 scripts/check_site.py

The checker requires the homepage, 404 page, sitemap.xml, feed.xml, and robots.txt. It verifies local href and src targets and HTML fragment IDs. For every page except 404, it requires a title, a meta description, a canonical URL that matches the page, and no noindex; the 404 page must be noindex. The sitemap must list exactly the indexable pages, robots.txt must point to it, and JSON-LD blocks must parse. External URLs and CSS URLs are not checked. Also inspect new or changed pages at phone width before publishing.

The production build, frozen dependency check, and checker passed on 2026-10-23 with Ruby 3.4.12 and Bundler 2.6.9. The same day, the homepage, /blog/, /about/, 404, and a draft article were rendered in headless Chromium at 375 px and 1280 px without horizontal page scrolling. The GitHub-hosted workflow runs have not yet been reviewed.

Drafts

Article drafts live in _drafts/, which is ignored by Git, so unfinished text does not appear in this public repository. Preview and check them locally:

bundle _2.6.9_ exec jekyll serve --drafts
JEKYLL_ENV=production bundle _2.6.9_ exec jekyll build --strict_front_matter --drafts
python3 scripts/check_site.py

The workflows build without --drafts, so CI does not check draft content. To publish, move the reviewed file to _posts/YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.md and add it in the release pull request. The URL stays /blog/<slug>/.

Publishing

In repository settings, select Pages → Build and deployment → Source → GitHub Actions. This setting has already been selected by the repository owner.

• Pull requests into main run the Check site workflow.
• Pushes to main run checks and Publish site. Publication repeats the build and link checks, and uploads only _site/ after they pass.
• Publish site can also be run manually from main in the Actions tab.
• The deployment uses the github-pages environment and the built-in GitHub token. Configure the environment's deployment branch rule to allow only main.

The first deployment of the initial homepage to https://radiusdeck.github.io/ was confirmed by the repository owner.

Troubleshooting and rollback

Open the failed workflow in Actions and inspect the failing step. Dependency or build failures must be resolved before deployment. If the build passes but deployment fails, check the Pages source and github-pages environment rules.

To undo a published change, revert its commit, verify the resulting build, and push the revert to main. This triggers publication of the restored content.

Site structure

Path	Purpose
_layouts/default.html	Page shell: header navigation, footer
_layouts/post.html	Article: title, author, publication, update and test dates, related guides
_includes/head.html	Title, description, canonical URL, Open Graph, feed link, JSON-LD (TechArticle for articles, WebSite for the homepage)
blog.md, about.md	/blog/ list of guides and /about/ page
sitemap.xml, feed.xml, robots.txt	Liquid templates; no Jekyll plugins are used

Article front matter:

title: "FreeRADIUS clients.conf: Examples and Best Practices"
description: One or two sentences for search results and the guide list.
last_modified_at: 2026-11-02   # only after a substantial update
tested:
  date: 2026-10-23
  environment: Official FreeRADIUS Docker image
  freeradius: "3.2.10"
  radiusdeck: "0.1.0"
related:
  - /blog/<slug>/

The author (RadiusDeck team) and the post layout come from _config.yml defaults. The layout prints the title as the page heading, so the article body starts without an H1. Related guides appear only when the target article is published.

robots.txt allows all crawlers, including AI search crawlers.