Also, if you "kdb5_util purge_mkeys" after those two operations, you get a bad error message: Purging the follwing master key(s) from K/M@KRBTEST.COM: KVNO: 1 kdb5_util: Invalid argument while updating actkvno data for master principal entry This happens because kdb5_purge_mkeys computes an empty active mkvno and krb5_db_fetch_mkey_list rejects it with EINVAL. This is technically a separate bug, but would be difficult to reproduce if the update_princ_encryption bug is fixed, so I'm noting it here.