DESCRIPTION

The .k5login file, which resides in a user's home directory, contains a list of the Kerberos principals. Anyone with valid tickets for a principal in the file is allowed host access with the UID of the user in whose home directory the file resides. One common use is to place a .k5login file in root's home directory, thereby granting system administrators remote root access to the host via Kerberos.

EXAMPLES

Suppose the user "alice" had a .k5login file in her home directory containing the following line:

[email protected]

This would allow "bob" to use any of the Kerberos network applications, such as telnet(1), rlogin(1), rsh(1), and rcp(1), to access alice's account, using bob's Kerberos tickets.

Let us further suppose that "alice" is a system administrator. Alice and the other system administrators would have their principals in root's .k5login file on each host:

[email protected]
joeadmin/[email protected]

This would allow either system administrator to log in to these hosts using their Kerberos tickets instead of having to type the root password. Note that because "bob" retains the Kerberos tickets for his own principal, "[email protected]", he would not have any of the privileges that require alice's tickets, such as root access to any of the site's hosts, or the ability to change alice's password.