Problem:

When obtaining a TGT via 'kinit' utility, the operation hangs on RHEL 7.x


Cause:

This issue may be observed due to a conflict between the Kerberos library shipped with DirectControl and libpthread.so.
In this scenario, 'libpthread.so' is pulled into the process due to an nsswitch designation for 'myhostname', which is appears to be introduced via a systemd-libs update package.

When 'myhostname' exists within nsswitch.conf (ie. nsswitch.conf:hosts: files dns myhostname), the libpthread function is called into the process which is handling the mutex for krb5 cache protection. When the function enters the process, it takes over the mutex call and the function hangs.


Workaround:

Commenting out 'myhostname' from nsswitch.conf will cause this issue to go away, however this may not be a reasonable workaround as systemd has reliances upon this designation.

For the time being, there is no reliable workaround due to the base conflicts between the Kerberos library and libpthread brought in by 'myhostname'.


Resolution:

This issue is resolved in Suite 2017 (5.4.0)