Article View: comp.protocols.kerberos
Article #934Re: Scalability issues with Kerberos
From: Bill Sommerfeld
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 23:40
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 23:40
37 lines
2289 bytes
2289 bytes
In article <9301211836.AA14955@shadow.secure.bellcore.com> lunt@CTT.BELLCORE.COM (Steve Lunt) writes: Database dumps and loads (via krb_util, which is used by kprop) are slow when the database is that big (apparently order n log n). But ticket requests (kinit) and database updates (kadmin and kpasswd) are still very fast (apparently order log n). Also, the ndbm files get really big (I think I tested it on a Sun with 10,000 principals, and the file was 5 meg in size), if this is a problem on your system. Note that this is purely a function of the KDC implementation, and fixing this requires no changes to clients, servers, or the main run time library. If you've got a better, more scaleable database (or even a better dbm implementation -- that's all that kerberos needs), you can drop it in place on the KDC and use it instead. If you've got a better replication system, you can drop it in place on your KDC and use it instead, and won't have to change the clients. I'm aware of Kerberos v4 implementations that have used at least three different databases underlying the MIT KDC implementation. ingres (the old university ingres. this was too slow and flushed in favor of dbm). dbm (both "dbm classic" and ndbm). Apollo registry (this was an internal project which was never released -- however it "evolved" into the DCE kerberos v5 support). The database module is eminently replaceable. In addition, Transarc's AFS3 includes has a v4-kerberos system (albeit with a serious flaw: they use a completely incompatible string-to-key algorithm) built over their "ubik" replication technology. - Bill
Technical Details
Message-ID:
<SOMMERFELD.93Jan21184322@unknown.apollo.hp.com>Path:
arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!apollo.hp.com!netnewsReferences:
<9301211836.AA14955@shadow.secure.bellcore.com>Show Full Headers
Complete Article Headers
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.kerberos Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!apollo.hp.com!netnews From: sommerfeld@apollo.hp.com (Bill Sommerfeld) Subject: Re: Scalability issues with Kerberos Sender: usenet@apollo.hp.com (Usenet News) Message-ID: <SOMMERFELD.93Jan21184322@unknown.apollo.hp.com> In-Reply-To: lunt@CTT.BELLCORE.COM's message of Thu, 21 Jan 1993 18:36:58 GMT Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 23:40:08 GMT Lines: 38 References: <9301211836.AA14955@shadow.secure.bellcore.com> Nntp-Posting-Host: snarfblatt.ch.apollo.hp.com Organization: Hewlett Packard