Kerberos

[Penfold]

On my Intel iMac, running OS 10.6.8, and in the Console (app) Messages window I find the following three messages repeated continuously :

07/05/2014 14:33:51 com.apple.launchd[1] (edu.mit.Kerberos.krb5kdc[41248]) Exited with exit code: 1
07/05/2014 14:33:51 com.apple.launchd[1] (edu.mit.Kerberos.krb5kdc) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
07/05/2014 14:34:01 edu.mit.Kerberos.krb5kdc[41255] krb5kdc: cannot initialize realm LKDC:SHA1.5E61F2ED8BCA142D68DB643F68E1A8E58454BA5F

There are 4000 messages listed, according to info listed at the bottom of the window and the same messages occur in the system log.

By any chance might this be F@H related? I note the 'mit', but neither I nor any of my family have never had any dealings at all with MIT.

I use F@HControl on the iMac to remotely oversee F@HClient running on a Ubuntu machine, and I use Terminal app on the iMac to oversee the Ubuntu machine itself.

[davidcoton]

kerberos is a network authentication protocol. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerberos_%28protocol%29.
It's built into OS X, so may be called indirectly by FAH comms requests. Do the errors stop if FAHControl is stopped?

David

[Jesse_V]

Kerberos was originally designed by MIT. See http://kerberos.org/ I'm not exactly sure what your Mac uses it for, but it certainly isn't directly related to F@h.

$ host kerberos.mit.edu
kerberos.mit.edu has address 18.7.33.13

[Penfold]

OK. Thanks.

It's a complete mystery to me. Never been in touch with MIT as far as I can remember. I'll keep searching.

[Jesse_V]

OK. Thanks.

It's a complete mystery to me. Never been in touch with MIT as far as I can remember. I'll keep searching.

You wouldn't have to be. Your Mac apparently uses that server, and the server is hosted at MIT, so that's where your machine connects to.

[Penfold]

kerberos is a network authentication protocol. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerberos_%28protocol%29.
It's built into OS X, so may be called indirectly by FAH comms requests. Do the errors stop if FAHControl is stopped?

David

That's the first intimation I've received that Kerberos is actually built in to OS X. Thank you!

Digging around, I have now found the following, in the /System/Library folder, that are to do with Kerberos, although trying to find them using Spotlight failed. They are :

/System/Library/KerberosPlugins

and in the folder /System/Library/LaunchAgents :

com.apple.Kerberos.renew.plist
and
com.apple.KerberosHelper.LKDCHelper.plist

The F@HControl app is only open occasionally when I want to remotely check on F@HClient running on the Ubuntu machine.

Running an app called EtreCheck, I find this item returned