This message is intended to address some of the questions regarding Aktis, Inc.'s (Geer Zolot Associates') Kerberos 5 / AFS interoperability solution. In a personal reply to a query to Mike Ganzberger at LLNL last week, I stated that "[Aktis] can provide an integrated Kerberos V5 / AFS solution." On his own initiative, Joe Ramus at LLNL posted my message to the [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list, after which it apparently travelled far and wide. It was not our intention to advertise over these mailing lists. Frankly, the extraordinary level of response to that message surprised us. In that message, I also said that I believed it was unlikely that MIT would provide a K5/AFS solution any time soon. Strictly speaking, I do not know this to be true; it is my opinion based on my knowledge of the people involved in Kerberos and AFS development at MIT. I would like to apologize in advance if I have misrepresented MIT Information Systems' plans. There are currently many ways to use Kerberos V4 and AFS together. One way, the one that Aktis recommends, is to use the programs 'aklog' and 'asetkey' from MIT. These programs were developed at MIT by the staff of Project Athena. They operate by requesting an ordinary Kerberos 4 service ticket, modifying it into an AFS token, and stuffing it into the AFS client in the kernel. As such, they work only with Kerberos V4, and not with Kerberos V5. Aktis has code working in-house that allows the use of Kerberos V5 with the currently available version of AFS. It is and has been our intention to release the technical details of our solution to the net (under terms identical to those of Kerberos itself). Only the unexpected announcement of the past week has made this seem disorderly. You may expect us to make good on our intent in a matter of days. Commercial parties who prefer supported software may contact us by telephone. Barry Jaspan, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Aktis, Inc. / Geer Zolot Associates (617) 374-3700
