NAME
kerberos - introduction to the Kerberos system
DESCRIPTION
The Kerberos system authenticates individual users in a net-
work environment. After authenticating yourself to Kerberos,
you can use the kerberos authentication option of network
services such as NFS. In addition, in some environments you
can use network utilities such as rlogin(1), rcp(1), and
rsh(1) without having to present passwords to remote hosts
and without having to bother with .rhosts files. See your
system administrator for more information about Kerberos
support at your site.
Before you can use Kerberos, you must be registered as a
user in the Kerberos database. You can use the kinit(1) com-
mand to find out your status. This command tries to log you
into the Kerberos system. kinit will prompt you for a user-
name and password. Enter your username and password. If the
utility lets you login without giving you a message, you
have already been registered.
If you enter your username and kinit responds with this mes-
sage:
Principal unknown (kerberos)
you haven't been registered as a Kerberos user. See your
system administrator.
A Kerberos name contains three parts. The first is the prin-
cipal name, which is usually a user's or service's name. The
second is the instance, which in the case of a user is usu-
ally NULL. Some users may have privileged instances, how-
ever, such as root or admin. In the case of a service, the
instance is the name of the machine on which it runs; that
is, there can be an NFS service running on the machine ABC,
which is different from the NFS service running on the
machine XYZ. The third part of a Kerberos name is the realm.
The realm corresponds to the Kerberos service providing
authentication for the principal. For example, at MIT there
is a Kerberos running at the Laboratory for Computer Science
and one running at Project Athena.
When writing a Kerberos name, the principal name is
separated from the instance (if not NULL) by a period, and
the realm (if not the local realm) follows, preceded by an
``@'' sign. The following are examples of valid Kerberos
names:
billb
jis.admin
[email protected]
[email protected]
When you authenticate yourself with Kerberos, typically
through the kinit command, Kerberos gives you an initial
Kerberos ticket. (A Kerberos ticket is an encrypted protocol
message that provides authentication.) Kerberos uses this
ticket for network utilities such as NFS, rlogin and rcp.
The ticket transactions are done transparently, so you do
not have to worry about their management.
Note, however, that tickets expire. Privileged tickets, such
as root instance tickets, expire in a few minutes, while
tickets that carry more ordinary privileges may be good for
several hours or a day, depending on the installation's pol-
icy. If your login session extends beyond the time limit,
you will have to re-authenticate yourself to Kerberos to get
new tickets. Use the kinit command to re-authenticate your-
self.
If you use the kinit command to get your tickets, you can
use the kdestroy(1) command to destroy your tickets before
you end your login session. For more information about the
kinit and kdestroy commands, see the kinit(1) and kdes-
troy(1) manual pages.
Currently, Kerberos supports NFS and other RPC network ser-
vices using the AUTH_KERB authentication type. In some
environments, the following network services are also sup-
ported: rlogin, rsh, and rcp. Other services are being
worked on, such as the pop mail system, but are not yet
available.
SEE ALSO
kdestroy(1), kinit(1), klist(1), kerbd(1M), kerberos(3KRB),
krb.conf(4)
BUGS
Kerberos will not do authentication forwarding. In other
words, if you use rlogin to login to a remote host, you can-
not use Kerberos services from that host until you authenti-
cate yourself explicitly on that host. Although you may need
to authenticate yourself on the remote host, be aware that
when you do so, rlogin sends your password across the net-
work in clear text.
AUTHORS
Steve Miller, MIT Project Athena/Digital Equipment Corpora-
tion
Clifford Neuman, MIT Project Athena
The following people helped out on various aspects of the
system:
Jeff Schiller designed and wrote the administration server
and its user interface, kadmin. He also wrote the dbm ver-
sion of the database management system.
Mark Colan developed the Kerberos versions of rlogin, rsh,
and rcp, as well as contributing work on the servers.
John Ostlund developed the Kerberos versions of passwd and
userreg.
Stan Zanarotti pioneered Kerberos in a foreign realm (LCS),
and made many contributions based on that experience.
Many people contributed code and/or useful ideas. These
include, Jim Aspnes, Bob Baldwin, John Barba, Richard Basch,
Jim Bloom, Bill Bryant, Rob French, Dan Geer, David Jedlin-
sky, John Kohl, John Kubiatowicz, Bob McKie, Brian Murphy,
Ken Raeburn, Chris Reed, Jon Rochlis, Mike Shanzer, Bill
Sommerfeld, Jennifer Steiner, Ted Ts'o, and Win Treese.
RESTRICTIONS
COPYRIGHT 1985,1986 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
|
Закладки на сайте Проследить за страницей |
Created 1996-2025 by Maxim Chirkov Добавить, Поддержать, Вебмастеру |