# Kinit Auxiliary Service
Kinit auxiliary service is a critical service both for authentication between Kyuubi client/server
and for authentication between Kyuubi server/Hadoop cluster in a Kerberos environment.
It will get a Kerberos Ticket Cache from KDC and periodically re-kinit to keep the Ticket Cache fresh.
**Note**:
- Kinit auxiliary service is critical to Kyuubi Kerberos authentication, but not vice versa.
- Kinit auxiliary service can also work with other authentication mode.
## Installing and Configuring the Kerberos Clients
Usually, Kerberos client is installed as default. You can validate it using `klist` tool.
```bash
$ klist -V
Kerberos 5 version 1.15.1
```
If the client is not installed, you should install it ahead based on the OS platform that you prepare to run Kyuubi.
`krb5.conf` is a configuration file for tuning up the creation of Kerberos ticket cache.
The default location is `/etc` on Linux,
and we can use `KRB5_CONFIG` environmental variable to overwrite the location of the configuration file.
Replace or configure `krb5.conf` to point to the KDC.
## Kerberos Ticket
Kerberos client is aimed to generate a Ticket Cache file.
Then, Kyuubi can use this Ticket Cache to authenticate with those kerberized services,
e.g. HDFS, YARN, and Hive Metastore server, etc.
A Kerberos ticket cache contains a service and a client principal names,
lifetime indicators, flags, and the credential itself, e.g.
```bash
$ klist
Ticket cache: FILE:/tmp/krb5cc_5441
Default principal: spark/kyuubi.host.name@KYUUBI.APACHE.ORG
Valid starting Expires Service principal
2020-11-25T13:17:18 2020-11-26T13:17:18 krbtgt/KYUUBI.APACHE.ORG@KYUUBI.APACHE.ORG
renew until 2020-12-02T13:17:18
```
Kerberos credentials can be stored in Kerberos ticket cache.
For example, `/tmp/krb5cc_5441` in the above case.
They are valid for relatively short period. So, we always need to refresh it for long-running services like Kyuubi.
## Configurations
| Key | Default | Meaning | Since |
|----------------------------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|--------------------------------------|
| kyuubi.kinit.principal | <undefined>
| Name of the Kerberos principal.
| 1.0.0
|
| kyuubi.kinit.keytab | <undefined>
| Location of Kyuubi server's keytab.
| 1.0.0
|
| kyuubi.kinit.interval | PT1H
| How often will Kyuubi server run `kinit -kt [keytab] [principal]` to renew the local Kerberos credentials cache
| 1.0.0
|
| kyuubi.kinit.max.attempts | 10
| How many times will `kinit` process retry
| 1.0.0
|
When working with a Kerberos-enabled Hadoop cluster, we should ensure that `hadoop.security.authentication`
is set to `KERBEROS` in `$HADOOP_CONF_DIR/core-site.xml` or `$KYUUBI_HOME/conf/kyuubi-defaults.conf`.
Then we need to specify `kyuubi.kinit.principal` and `kyuubi.kinit.keytab` for authentication.
For example,
```bash
kyuubi.kinit.principal=spark/kyuubi.apache.org@KYUUBI.APACHE.ORG
kyuubi.kinit.keytab=/path/to/kyuuib.keytab
```
**Note**:
`kyuubi.kinit.principal` must be in the format: `/@`, and `` must
be a FQDN of the host Kyuubi is running.
Kyuubi will use this `principal` to impersonate client users,
so the cluster should enable it to do impersonation for some particular user from some particular hosts.
For example,
```bash
hadoop.proxyuser..groups *
hadoop.proxyuser..hosts *
```
Also, you must configure `kyuubi.session.local.dir.allow.list` to exclude your Kyuubi server's keytab and any other credential from the local directories.
Otherwise, any user who can login to the Kyuubi server via Kyuubi frontend protocols is possible to obtain the keytab and to impersonate the users configured by Hadoop proxy user settings.
## Further Readings
- [Hadoop in Secure Mode](https://hadoop.apache.org/docs/current/hadoop-project-dist/hadoop-common/SecureMode.html)
- [Use Kerberos for authentication in Spark](https://spark.apache.org/docs/latest/security.html#kerberos)