Bug/kadmind: Required parameters in kdc.conf missing while initializing, aborting

[Alexander Pánek]

Hello,

I have encountered a misleading behaviour in the startup of kadmind on Ubuntu 14.04 with Kerberos 1.12 (I can’t find out a more specific version, unfortunately): when setting the `default_principal_expiration` in a realm to a value that is not a valid absolute time string according to [1], kadmind immediately aborts with the following error message:

> Required parameters in kdc.conf missing while initializing, aborting

The same error message is also printed when setting this config entry to its default value 0.

I get that I’m probably not supposed to set this entry to anything but a valid absolute time, but it would be very helpful if kadmind actually told me that it’s not valid and also accepts the default value. Basically the error message tells me the opposite of what kadmind wants. :)

I wanted to create a bug report in Kerberos’ bug tracker, but unfortunately I don’t have the rights to do so.

Thanks in advance & kind regards,

Alex

[1] http://web.mit.edu/Kerberos/krb5-1.12/doc/basic/date_format.html#abstime