Failure to obtain initial naming context

You can recover from failure to obtain an initial naming context.

Symptoms

Failure to obtain initial naming context

Resolving the problem

Attempting to perform a Kerberos login results in a Web services Kerberos credential invalid error, and WebSphere Failure to obtain initial naming context errors. These errors indicate that WebSphere did not initialize the Java naming factory, which is required for Kerberos authentication.

  1. Open the WAS admin console and expand Servers.
  2. Click Application servers, click server name, then expand Java and Process Management on the right.
  3. Click Process Definition, click Java Virtual Machine and then enter the following argument text in the Generic JVM arguments box (with a space to separate it from other arguments, if needed): 
    -Djava.naming.factory.initial=com.ibm.websphere.naming.WsnInitialContextFactory
  4. Click Apply and Save.
  5. Restart WebSphere.