Why is my Linux FTP script throwing a KERBEROS_V4 rejected as an authentication type error?

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If you’re running a newer Red Hat version like RHEL5, you may encounter an error like the following:

500 AUTH not understood
500 AUTH not understood
KERBEROS_V4 rejected as an authentication type
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.

What is likely causing the issue is that you are using by default /usr/kerberos/bin/ftp instead of /usr/bin/ftp. You can confirm which version you’re using by typing “which ftp”.

Kerberos FTP is of course expecting Kerberos authentication and throws a warning message if you’re not using it.

To alleviate the warning/error, specify the full path to the ftp you want to use, which in most cases would be /usr/bin/ftp. To simplify this and to prevent doing so in the future, you could set up an alias in your .profile or .bash_profile like this:

alias ftp=/usr/bin/ftp