The Ticket-Granting Ticket

The kinit command prompts for your password. If you enter it successfully, you will obtain a ticket-granting ticket and a ticket session key which gives you the right to use the ticket. This combination of the ticket and its associated key is known as your credentials. As illustrated below, client programs use your ticket-granting ticket credentials in order to obtain client-specific credentials as needed.

Your credentials are stored in a credentials cache, which is often just a file in /tmp. The credentials cache is also called the ticket file, especially in Kerberos V4 documentation. Note, however, that a credentials cache does not have to be stored in a file.