The gss_display_status() function enables an application to obtain a textual representation of a GSS-API status code for display to the user or for logging purposes. Because some status values may indicate multiple conditions, applications may need to call gss_display_status() multiple times, with each call generating a single text string.

The message_context parameter is used by gss_acquire_cred() to store state information on error messages that are extracted from a given status_value. The message_context parameter must be initialized to 0 by the application prior to the first call, and gss_display_status() will return a non-zero value in this parameter if there are further messages to extract.

The message_context parameter contains all state information required by gss_display_status() to extract further messages from the status_value. If a non-zero value is returned in this parameter, the application is not required to call gss_display_status() again unless subsequent messages are desired.

The parameter descriptions for gss_display_status() follow:

minor_status

Status code returned by the underlying mechanism.

status_value

Status value to be converted.

status_type

If the value is GSS_C_GSS_CODE, status_value is a GSS-API status code. If the value is GSS_C_MECH_CODE, then status_value is a mechanism status code.

mech_type

Underlying mechanism that is used to interpret a minor status value. Supply GSS_C_NO_OID to obtain the system default.

message_context

Should be initialized to zero prior to the first call. On return from gss_display_status(), a non-zero status_value parameter indicates that additional messages may be extracted from the status code by means of subsequent calls to gss_display_status(), passing the same status_value , status_type, mech_type, and message_contextparameters.

status_string

Textual representation of the status_value. Storage associated with this parameter must be freed by the application after use with a call to gss_release_buffer(3GSS).

The gss_display_status() function may return the following status codes:

GSS_S_COMPLETE

Successful completion.

GSS_S_BAD_MECH

Indicates that translation in accordance with an unsupported mechanism type was requested.

GSS_S_BAD_STATUS

The status value was not recognized, or the status type was neither GSS_C_GSS_CODE nor GSS_C_MECH_CODE.

GSS_S_FAILURE

The underlying mechanism detected an error for which no specific GSS status code is defined. The mechanism-specific status code reported by means of the minor_status parameter details the error condition.

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

gss_acquire_cred(3GSS), gss_release_buffer(3GSS), attributes(5)

GSS-API Programming Guide