Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of linux-nfs-owner@vger.kernel.org designates 2620:137:e000::1:20 as permitted sender) client-ip=2620:137:e000::1:20;
Feedback-ID: i8ce9446d:Fastmail
Message-ID: <589498d2-6cac-47bd-8e93-8fdd44e4be45@nubmail.ca>
Date:   Tue, 27 Sep 2022 13:21:22 -0700
MIME-Version: 1.0
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101
 Thunderbird/102.3.0
Content-Language: en-US
To:     linux-nfs@vger.kernel.org
From:   Aram Akhavan <aram@nubmail.ca>
Subject: Why does nfs-client.target include rpc.svcgssd?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Precedence: bulk

Hi all,

I'm a newbie starting to play around with kerberized nfs on Debian. I 
noticed that in the systemd target file nfs-client.target 
<http://git.linux-nfs.org/?p=steved/nfs-utils.git;a=blob;f=systemd/nfs-client.target;h=8a8300a1dfc6e6a77dfe0abed9942ded8f6b0103;hb=refs/heads/master> 
has *rpc-svcgssd* among its list of dependencies. From the man pages 
<https://linux.die.net/man/8/rpc.svcgssd>, it seems this is a 
server-side daemon, not client-, and as expected I don't seem to need it 
for the clients to mount anything successfully. Why is this part of the 
client target?

I thought it may be a dependency for something else, but I haven't been 
able to find what. Similarly, why is it installed with the *nfs-common* 
package instead of *nfs-kernel-server* if it's not needed?

This came up because I kept seeing errors on boot caused by rpc.svcgssd 
looking for nfs//FQDN/@/REALM /in the keytab, but it doesn't exist. 
rpc.gssd, on the other hand, was updated 
<https://linux.die.net/man/8/rpc.gssd> to search for other principals, 
like host/FQDN@REALM, which is what gets set up in the keytab by default.

Thanks,

Aram