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Name

kinit - Kerberos login utility

Synopsis

kinit [ -ilrv ] [ username ]

Availability

SUNWcsu

Description

The kinit command is used to login to the Kerberos authentication and authorization system. Note that only registered Kerberos users can use the Kerberos system. For information about registering as a Kerberos user, see the kerberos(1) manual page.

When you use kinit without options, the utility prompts for your username and Kerberos password, and tries to authenticate your login with the local Kerberos server. The username can be specified on the command line if desired.

If Kerberos authenticates the login attempt, kinit retrieves your initial ticket (i.e., ticket-granting ticket) and puts it in the ticket file specified by your KRBTKFILE environment variable. If this variable is undefined, your ticket will be stored in the file /tmp/tktuid, where uid specifies your user identification number. Tickets expire after a specified lifetime, after which kinit must be run again to refresh the tickets. The default ticket lifetime is 8 hours.

The kdestroy(1) command may be used to destroy any active tickets before you end your login session.

Options

-i
kinit prompts you for a Kerberos instance.
-l
kinit prompts you for a ticket lifetime in minutes. Due to protocol restrictions in Kerberos Version 4, this value must be between 5 and 1275 minutes; values less than 5 will be set to 5; values greater than 1275 will be set to 1275; values between the limits will be rounded down to a multiple of 5 (e.g., a value of 7 will be set to 5, 9 will be set to 5, 10 will remain unchanged).
-r
kinit prompts you for a Kerberos realm. This option lets you authenticate yourself with a remote Kerberos server.
-v
Verbose mode. kinit prints a status message indicating the success or failure of your login attempt.

See Also

kdestroy(1) , kerberos(1) , klist(1)

Bugs

The -r option has not been fully implemented.

Authors

Steve Miller, MIT Project Athena/Digital Equipment Corporation
Clifford Neuman, MIT Project Athena


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