When you get below error message when doing kinit using a keytab file klist: Unsupported key table format version number while starting keytab scan Make sure that keytab file is not of zero byte  e.g This is Zero byte keytab file and you will get the above error when trying to do kinit with it -rw------- 1 cloudera-scm cloudera-scm 0 Aug 30 12:15 ./32-cloudera-mgmt-SERVICEMONITOR/cmon.keytab A good keytab file will have non-zero size e.g. 778 for the below file  -rw------- 1 cloudera-scm cloudera-scm 778 Oct 12 05:21 ./150-cloudera-mgmt-SERVICEMONITOR/cmon.keytab   ... View more