gssd(8)

gssd8

Generic security services daemon

Usage

gssd [-d] [-h] [-v] [-s dir-list] [-c file-substring] [-r preferred-realm]

Overview

The gssd program provides support for the kernel GSS-API implementation.

The options are as follows:

-d

Run in debug mode. In this mode, gssd will not fork when it starts.

-h

Enable support for host-based initiator credentials. This permits a kerberized NFS mount to use a service principal in the default Kerberos 5 keytab file for access. Such access is enabled via the gssname option for the mount_nfs(8) command.

-v

Run in verbose mode. In this mode, gssd will log activity messages to syslog using LOG_INFO | LOG_DAEMON or to stderr, if the -d option has also been specified. The minor status is logged as a decimal number, since it is actually a Kerberos return status, which is signed.

-s dir-list

Look for an appropriate credential cache file in this list of directories. The list should be full pathnames from root, separated by ':' characters. Usually this list will simply be "/tmp". Without this option, gssd assumes that the credential cache file is called /tmp/krb5cc_<uid>, where <uid> is the effective uid for the RPC caller.

-c file-substring

Set a file-substring for the credential cache file names. Only files with this substring embedded in their names will be selected as candidates when -s has been specified. If not specified, it defaults to "krb5cc_".

-r preferred-realm

Use Kerberos credentials for this realm when searching for credentials in directories specified with -s. If not specified, the default Kerberos realm will be used.

Files

/etc/krb5.keytab

Contains Kerberos service principals which may be used as credentials by kernel GSS-API services.

Exit status

The gssd utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

Releases

39 releases since FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE; the text changed 26 times.

  1. 8.0
  2. 8.1
  3. 8.2
  4. 8.3
  5. 8.4
  6. 9.0
  7. 9.1
  8. 9.2
  9. 9.3
  10. 10.0
  11. 10.1
  12. 10.2
  13. 10.3
  14. 10.4
  15. 11.0
  16. 11.1
  17. 11.2
  18. 11.3
  19. 11.4
  20. 12.0
  21. 12.1
  22. 12.2
  23. 12.3
  24. 12.4
  25. 13.0–13.2
  26. 13.3–14.2
  27. 14.3–16.0

-c since FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE; -h since FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE; -r since FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE; -s since FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE; -v since FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE.

-o until FreeBSD 12.4-RELEASE.

History

The gssd manual page first appeared in FreeBSD 8.0.

Authors

This manual page was written by Doug Rabson ⟨[email protected]⟩.

From base 16.0-CURRENT-20261027-61c70dc16a79 in FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27). Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.