Are there conventions for service principal naming?

[Matthew M. DeLoera]

Hello,

Over the past few days I've managed to discover some details about 
service principal naming that I wanted to confirm with all of you, if 
you please.

If my SPN is in the form service_name/fqdn at REALM :

- I'm running gssglue (Ubuntu) with the MIT GSS-API and krb5 libs. When 
I sniff with WireShark, I notice that the SPN in my requests is always 
forced to all lower-case, regardless of what my code specifies. This 
burnt me some when I was recently debugging a linux service with AD2003. 
I couldn't understand why I kept getting "no principal in keytab matches 
desired name". It took forever to finally notice mixed-case in what 
should have been the matching principal in my keytab. (I'd inadvertently 
specified all upper-case when I ran ktpass in AD). I've since managed to 
google some mention that the fqdn *must* be all lower-case. So, is it 
correct that my fqdn will always be forced to lower-case on the wire? If 
so, there are a couple changes I'd want to make in my own software.

- Are there any guidelines to what I should use for service_name? Any 
lower/upper case conventions? Right now I'm just using "host/", and I 
haven't managed to find any definitive rules on a convention to follow.

That's all. No problems to speak of, otherwise!

Peace,
- Matthew