Transitioning to a New Public Key-based Security Mechanism

The more stringent security mechanisms of the public key cryptography family such as Diffie Hellman 640 bit (dh640-0) will require new credentials for each principal to be added to the existing cred table. The procedure outlined below is for a system currently running with Diffie-Hellman 192 bit (RPC security flavor AUTH_DES) security that will be converted to running with Diffie-Hellman 640 bit (RPC security flavor RPCSEC_GSS) security. Although this transition document highlights the most likely case, the principles are the same for converting from any one security mechanism type of the public key cryptography family to another security mechanism of the public key cryptography family.

The following example assumes that $PATH includes /usr/lib/nis.