On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 12:29:35PM +0000, Leo Vandewoestijne via Bird-users wrote:

Hello,

On a router with several sessions I use "cascading" templates. Not all sessions have authentication, but those that do all default to MD5.

When leaving the authentication option unset, you get warnings like:

bird: /usr/local/etc/bird.conf:57:18: Missing authentication option, assuming MD5

But when setting 'authentication md5;' in my main template, then sessions without password will complain:

bird: /usr/local/etc/bird.conf:56:28 MD5 authentication and password option should be used together /usr/local/etc/rc.d/bird: WARNING: failed to start bird

In the past using a useless 'password "";' helped to simply surpress warnings, but not anymore.

So now I have to add multiple templates to add 'authentication md5;' to sessions with authentication.

Long story short, my question is: why can't you affirm 'authentication md5;' as main default, regardless wether sessions do or don't have a password?

Hi See https://bird.network.cz/pipermail/bird-users/2025-August/018356.html -- Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo Ondrej 'Santiago' Zajicek (email: santiago@crfreenet.org) "To err is human -- to blame it on a computer is even more so."