New Xserve Build Machines

I just got two brand new Xserve build machines and the first thing I did was wipe out the default Tiger OSX Server install and install Leopard OSX Server instead. That wasn't too bad except for the fact that I had to go through the setup assistant first in Tiger before being able to boot off the Leopard disk, wipe the drive and install.

After I got Leopard OS X Server up and running on the Xserve, I tried to ssh out from a user account to another machine (my source repository server) that's running 10.4. While establishing communication, ssh had this huge delay (more than a minute - I think). I had to figure out what was going on so I ran ssh -v to get the verbose output from ssh while it was connecting.

The verbose output showed this.

debug1: Unspecified GSS failure.  Minor code may provide more information
Server not found in Kerberos database

debug1: Unspecified GSS failure.  Minor code may provide more information
Server not found in Kerberos database

debug1: Unspecified GSS failure.  Minor code may provide more information

So, I went spelunking in and ended up comparing the /etc/sshd_config files on both the local (Leopard Xserve) and remote (Tiger source repository) machines. I found on the remote machine (Tiger source repos) that Kerberos authentication was turned off by default but commented out.

So, I changed this:

# Kerberos options

# GSSAPI options
#GSSAPIAuthentication no

to this:

# Kerberos options
KerberosAuthentication no

# GSSAPI options
GSSAPIAuthentication no

in the /etc/sshd_config file on the remote (Tiger OS X server) and reconnected via ssh without a problem. Then it was on to more work setting up my new xserve build systems.