Use krb5 API to find KDC for a realm

0
votes

I am developing a kerberized application in C++ which makes use of the krb5 library. It is also intended to support multi realm kerberos, so the service it self runs in a realm such as HADOOP.COM and users are connecting from realm USERS.COM. For a tangential purpose, I need to know the KDC of the USERS.COM realm. I know the info is in the "realms" section of krb5.conf, but I need to be able to look this up programmatically.

So the problem is, given a realm, is there a way to look up the associated KDC using just the krb5 API (i.e. not manually parsing the krb5.conf file)

The API I am referencing is documented here

1
c++hadoopkerberos

1 Answers

1
votes

There's no public API to do this. The k5_locate_kdc function (in the MIT implementation; Heimdal approaches somewhat differently) is an internal function. To make things more complicated, there are several ways a KDC can be located:

  • krb5.conf
  • DNS SRV records
  • other KDC location plugins