ONC+ Developer's Guide

Principal Names

You need both a client and a server principal name to establish and maintain a security context.

Setting Server Principal Names

A server needs to be told the names of the principals it represents when it starts up. A server can act as more than one principal. rpc_gss_set_svc_name() sets the name of the principals, as shown in the following code example.


Example 5–12 rpc_gss_set_svc_name()

char *principal, *mechanism;
u_int req_time;

principal = "nfs@eng.acme.com";
mechanism = "kerberos_v5";
req_time = 10000;		/* time for which credential should be valid */

rpc_gss_set_svc_name(principal, mechanism, req_time, SERV_PROG, SERV_VERS);

Kerberos ignores the req_time parameter. Other authentication systems might use it.

For more information, see the rpc_gss_set_svc_name(3NSL) man page.

Generating Client Principal Names

Servers need to be able to operate on a client's principal name. For example, you might need to compare a client's principal name to an access control list, or look up a UNIX credential for that client, if such a credential exists. Such principal names are kept in the form of a rpc_gss_principal_t structure pointer. See the rpcsec_gss(3NSL) man page for more on rpc_gss_principal_t. If a server is to compare a principal name it has received with the name of a known entity, the server needs to be able to generate a principal name in that form.

The rpc_gss_get_principal_name() call takes as input several parameters that uniquely identify an individual on a network, and generates a principal name as a rpc_gss_principal_t structure pointer, as shown in the following code example.


Example 5–13 rpc_gss_get_principal_name()

rpc_gss_principal_t *principal;
rpc_gss_get_principal_name(principal, mechanism, name, node, domain);
. . .

The arguments to rpc_gss_get_principal_name() are:

Each security mechanism requires different identifying parameters. For example, Kerberos V5 requires a user name and, only optionally, qualified node and domain names, which in Kerberos terms are host and realm names.

For more information, see the rpc_gss_get_principal_name(3NSL) man page.

Freeing Principal Names

Use the free() library call to free principal names.