Setting the SSH option "GSSAPIAuthentication" to false

[Kenneth Holter]

Hi.


For some reason a few of our servers have started hanging during SSH
login. I've run a test where I added the "GSSAPIAuthentication=no"
option to the SSH options, which resolved the problem. I also changed
the setting from "yes" (the value set per default in the config file)
to "no" in /etc/ssh/sshd_conf on the client, with the same successful
result.

So my question is: What exactly does this option do? As far as I know
this has something to do with kerberos, and I'm guessing it's per
default set to "yes" to support kerberos out of the box. Is this
correct? And which consequences will it have to change the value from
"yes" to "no" in the config file?

Regards,
Kenneth Holter