[Q] kadmin won't start: "client not found"

Steve R Webster

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Nov 26, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/26/96

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I'm a Krb5 novice, using K5B7. Following the krb5-install.info closely,
with no slaves, I've gotten kadmind and krb5kdc running. But, kadmin
won't start, saying:

kadmin: Client not found in Kerberos database while initializing kadmin
interface

Here are my principals:

kadmin.local: listprincs
kadmin.local: admin/ad...@ZANSHIN.COM
kadmin/ad...@ZANSHIN.COM
krbtgt/ZANSH...@ZANSHIN.COM
kadmin/his...@ZANSHIN.COM
K/M...@ZANSHIN.COM
kadmin/chan...@ZANSHIN.COM

And, just in case, I did a "addprinc -randkey host/hippi.zanshin.com" to
put the kdc machine itself into the database, but no joy.

Any suggestions?

thanks,
-steve

Barry Jaspan

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Nov 26, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/26/96

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I'm a Krb5 novice, using K5B7. Following the krb5-install.info closely,
with no slaves, I've gotten kadmind and krb5kdc running. But, kadmin
won't start, saying:

kadmin: Client not found in Kerberos database while initializing kadmin
interface

From your kadmin.local output, it looks like your admin principal name
is "admin/ad...@ZANSHIN.COM". This means you need to invoke kadmin
with the "-p admin/admin" arguments so it knows to use that name;
otherwise it defaults to $USER/admin.

Barry

Steve R Webster

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Nov 26, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/26/96

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That fixed it, thanks. I suggest you place a hint to that effect in the
installation guide(s) (if you haven't already).

Also, somewhat off topic, the single most frustrating thing I've had to
deal with in the Krb5B7 installation process is errors that tell me a file
isn't found, without telling me which file it can't find! kadmind,
kadmin.local, and kdb5_util are guilty of this. I was reduced to poking
around with gdb to figure out what kadmind wanted! argh.

-steve

Barry Jaspan

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Nov 27, 1996, 3:00:00 AM11/27/96

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Also, somewhat off topic, the single most frustrating thing I've had to
deal with in the Krb5B7 installation process is errors that tell me a file
isn't found, without telling me which file it can't find!

Hmmm. Kerberos programs should at least say "File not found while
<doing such-and-so>" where <such-and-so> should indicate the type of
file it was looking for (if not the filename itself). Is this not the
case?

Barry

Steve R Webster

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Dec 2, 1996, 3:00:00 AM12/2/96

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In article <961127204...@DUN-DUN-NOODLES.MIT.EDU>, bja...@MIT.EDU
(Barry Jaspan) wrote:

The large granularity of such messages, combined with a novice admin,
makes it difficult or impossible to see what file is missing/broken in
some cases. It's particularly hairy when there are multiple installations
on the same machine.

For example, kdb5_util.c calls a bunch of initialization routines that all
say "file not found when..." upon failure without specifying the file.

I'd suggest that either the error throwing mechanism pass up the filename
as well as a simple numeric error code, or the docs be augmented with a
list of the sort:

If you see the missing file is probably
"file not found"
----------------- ----------------------------
while setting active database /foo/bar
while initializing database /baz/bletch
opening policy database ...
...

-steve