Oh p*x, it didn’t copy across some files.

I had managed to mess up the files for a product, so I wanted to copy them across from an older system.

This worked for some of the files – but when I came to start the subsystem – it was missing some files! For example /u/my/zosmf/liberty/lib/native/zos/s390x/bbgzsrv

I copied the files across again – and they were still not there!

Once you know the answer it is obvious…

There is a directory /usr/lpp/zosmf/liberty – and it was this directory that was missing.

Once I looked into it more carefully – this was not a directory, but a symbolic link to another directory liberty -> ../liberty_zos/current

To fix this I used

# go to my version of zosmf
cd /u/my/zosmf
# remove the symbolic link
rm liberty
#make the new link
ln -s /usr/lpp/liberty_zos/current liberty

and now I could use ls /u/tmp/zosmfp/liberty/lib/native/zos/s390x/bbgzsrv and it found the file.

If I had checked this before I started, I would have save myself a half day of IPLing older systems!

How to get a file from z/OS to a different z/OS without using FTP

I have a userid on a z/OS production system, which does not support FTP. To run my tests, I needed to get some files on to this system. Getting the files there was a challange.

The 3270 emulator has support for transferring files. It uses the IND$FILE TSO command to send data packaged as 3270 datastream As far as I can tell, this only works with data sets, not Unix files.

Creating a portable file from a data set.

You can package a data set into a FB Lrecl 80 dataset using the TSO XMIT (TRANSMIT) command.

Create a portable dataset from a Unix file.

On my home system I created a PAX dataset from a file in a Unix directory.

Use cd to get into the directory you want to package. If you specify a file name like /tmp/mypackage, the unpax will store the output in /tmp/mypackage which may not be where you want to store the data.

If you use relative directories such as ‘.’ it will unpax into a relative directory. I used the cd command to get into my working directory

pax -W "seqparms='space=(cyl,(10,10))'" -wzvf  "//'COLIN.ZOWE.PAX'" -x os390  myfile

You need both the single and double quotes around the data set name.

This created a data set with record format FB, and Lrecl 80.

A 360 MB file became a 426 CYL data set.

If you run out of space ( B37-04 abend). Delete the dataset before you reissue the pax command, otherwise the space parameters on the pax command are ignored; and increase the amount of space in the pax command.

I FTPed this down to my Linux machine in binary mode.

Send the file to the remote z/OS over 3270 emulator

Because FTP was not available I had to use the TSO facility IND$FILE. One of the options from the “file” menu was “File Transfer”.

You fill in details of the local file name, the remote data set name, and data set attributes.

In theory you need to be in TSO option 6 – where you can enter TSO commands, but when I tried this I kept getting “input field too small”. I had to exit ISPF and get into native TSO before the command worked.

The transfer rate is very slow. It sends one block at a time, and waits for the acknowledgement. With TCP/IP you can send multiple blocks before waiting for the ack, and use big blocks. For a 300MB file, I achieved 47KB per second with a 16000 block size – so not very high.

With IND$FILE, pick the biggest block size you can. I think it supports a maximum size of 32767. I got 86 KB/second with a 32767 block size with DFT mode.

For a dataset packaged with TSO XMIT

Use the TSO command RECEIVE INDSN(…) to restore the data set.

Un PAX the file to recreate it

On the production system, I use went into Unix, and used the cd command to get to the destination directory.

pax -ppx -rf  "//'COLIN.ZOWE.PAX'"      

Programming shared memory – more head banging.

I was trying to use shared memory (to look at Java Shared Classes), and it took me a day to get it working – better documentation would have helped.

I had two basic problems

  1. Using smctl to display information about the shared memory, gave the size as 0 bytes, even though the ipcs command showed me there were megabytes of data in the shared memory area.
  2. Trying to attach the shared memory gave me “invalid parameters” return code – even though the documented reasons for this error code did not apply to my program.

I tried many things, from using different userids, to running with a different storage key, running APF authorised….

I eventually got it to work by compiling my C program in 64 bit mode rather than 31 bit mode. There is no discussion about 31 bit/64 bit in the documentation. If the shared memory in 64 bit mode, you will need 64 bit addressability, so you need a 64 bit program. But there is no way of determining that the shared memory is 64 bit!

My basic program

{ 
//struct shmid_ds buf;
struct shmid_ds64 buf;
memset(&buf ,0,sizeof(buf));
int shmid = 8197;
int rc = 0;
long l;
int cmd = IPC_STAT;
char * fn = "COLIN";
int shmflg =0;
shmflg = IPC_STAT;
// rc =shmctl(shmid, cmd, &buf);
rc =shmctl64(shmid, cmd, &buf);
perror("shmctl " );
printf("shctl rc %i\n",rc);
l = buf.shm_segsz;
printf("size %ld\n",l);
printHex(stdout,&buf,sizeof(buf));
///////////////////////////////////////////////
// shmat
///////////////////////////////////////////////
char * pData = NULL;
pData = shmat(shmid, NULL , 0 );
printf("Address %ld\n",pData);
printHex(stdout,pData+4096*1024,1024*1024);
int e = errno;
perror("shmat ");
printf("Errno: %s\n",strerror(e));
return 0;
}

Originally I was using EDCCB to compile and bind this.

The EINVAL error return code was (from the documentation) for cases where the pointer in shmat was non NULL. I was passing NULL – so none of this made sense.

The reason code 0717014A was

JRInvalidAmode: An incorrect access mode was specified on the access service
Action: The access mode specified on the access service has unsupported bits turned on. Reissue the request and specify a valid access mode.

It turned out that my program was 31 bit. When I used 64 bit – it magically started working.

I compiled it with EDCQCB, and had to change a few things to be 64 bit mode.

  • shmid_ds buf -> shmid_ds64
  • shmctl -> shmctl64

When I ran it in 31 bit mode, the length of the storage returned was 0. In 64 bit mode, it gave the correct length. This looks like a way of telling what mode the shared memory is!

Understanding spawn and _BPX_SHAREAS

You can use spawn() to create another thread to do work. It may be able to run in the same address space as the originator, or it may run in its own address space.

It is cheaper to run in the requester’s address space, as it just creates a new TCB. If it runs in a different address space, in one of the pool of OMVS BPXAS address spaces, there is additional overhead.

I set up a shell script to call a Rexx script which did a spawn of another shell script.

I used the Rexx script to display information about the threads.

With _BPX_SHAREAS=YES – share the address space

the output was

jobname  asid    ppid    pid    threadid  tcb  cmdline
COLIN 21 1 50397218 212A80003 8BEA50 OMVS
COLIN 21 50397218 16842787 212A68002 8B9C90 -sh
COLIN2 4C 16842787 50397295 212AA8000 8FB2F8 sh kk.sh
COLIN2 4C 50397295 33620080 212AB0000 8D6A88 ./r.rexx YES

We can see the following

  1. The top level process in OMVS (parent process id) 1 invoked a program OMVS with process id(pid) 50397218, in address space 0x21
  2. This process invoked a shell (-sh) with pid 16842787 in address space 0x21
  3. This executed a command “sh kk.sh” (my test script) with a process id in address space 0x4c, jobname COLIN2, and TCB 8FB2F8.
  4. This invoked shell script invoked a command “./r.rexx YES” in the same address space 0x4c, jobname COLIN2 with a different TCB 8D6A88. This is sharing the address space.

With _BPX_SHAREAS=NO – do not share the address space

the output was similar to the _BPX_SHAREAS=YES, but different

jobname  asid    ppid    pid    threadid  tcb    cmdline
COLIN 21 1 50397218 212A80003 8BEA50 OMVS
COLIN 21 50397218 16842787 212A68002 8B9C90 -sh
COLIN9 4B 16842787 83951726 212AA8000 8FB380 sh kk.sh
COLIN1 4D 83951726 16842864 212AB0000 8FB2F8 ./r.rexx NO
  • The sh k.sh ran in a different address space 0x4B, with a different jobname COLIN9.
  • Because _BPX_SHARESAS=NO, the command “./r.rexx YES” executed in a different address space 0x4d, jobname COLIN1.

Comparison between the two scenarios

  1. With _BPX_SHAREAS=YES, one address space was shared, with two (lightweight) TCBs in it.
  2. With _BPX_SHAREAS=NO, the address spaces were not shared, and one of the pool of BPXAS address spaces were used.

When do you get not shared, even when _BPX_SHAREAS=YES was specified?

There are several cases when the system will not run a program in a shared address space.

Integrity

If there is a mismatch between APF states, for example

  • the caller is APF authorised; you do not want an unauthorised program access the memory in the shared address space of the APF authorised thread.
  • the caller is not APF authorised, but you are calling an APF authorised program.

The called program may change the userid or the group.

If your program changes the userid or group it is running under, for example a web server doing work for different userids. You can set a flag (s) on a file chmod to indicate that this program may change userid or group. See set-user-ID and Set-group-ID in chmod. You can use the ls -ltr command

-rwsr-sr-x   1 OMVSKERN ZWEADMIN    1336 Feb 26 16:41 r.rexx       

Where the first s is for set-user-ID. The second s is for set-group-ID.

When the file had u+s, I got the following error message

FSUM9209 cannot execute: reason code = 0b1b0473: EDC5157I An internal error has occurred.

Why can’t java use my key ring?

I had a problem with z/OSMF. I configured it to use an exiting keyring, but it consistently refused to use it. I had messages like

[WARNING ] CWPKI0809W: There is a failure loading the defaultKeyStore keystore. If an SSL configuration references the defaultKeyStore keystore, then the SSL configuration will fail to initialize.

This blog post covers how I debugged this situation.

What seemed strange was this only occurred when an Elliptic Curve certificate was being used – and not an RSA certificate.

Even more curiouser was the documentation mentioned access to the <ringOwner>.<ringName>.LST resource in the RDATALIB class. See here. I didn’t have this defined and yet RSA certificates would work! So curiouser and curiouser (or for the people who like correct grammar, curiouser and more curiouser).

All applications needing access to certificates and private keys use the R_datalib callable service.

The bottom line

  • z/OSMF has userid IZUSVR
  • I had a keyring and used two certificates
    • An RSA certificate, CCPKeyring.IZUDFLT, belonging to userid IZUSVR – based on the sample JCL provided by z/OSMF
    • An existing Elliptic Curve certificate NISTEC224 belonging to userid COLIN. This works else where.
  • Without <ringOwner>.<ringName>.LST defined the class(RDATALIB) the RSA certificate worked
  • Without <ringOwner>.<ringName>.LST defined the class(RDATALIB) the Elliptic Curve certificate failed
  • Once I found the problem I defined <ringOwner>.<ringName>.LST in class(RDATALIB), and gave the userid IZUSVR Update access to it – and the Elliptic curve worked
  • The reasons (being wise after the event)
    • R_datalib checks access on one profile in the RDATALIB class first – <ringowner>.<ringname>.LST. If there is none, it will fall back to check on two profiles in the FACILITY class – IRR.DIGTCERT.LISTRING and IRR.DIGTCERT.GENCERT. If the certificate is not owned by the accessing ID (except CERTAUTH or SITE), RDATALIB class has to be used for private key access.
    • This is true for the RSA certificate, used the IRRDIGTCERT.LISTRING class(FACILITY) and had access. So this worked.
    • For the Elliptic Curve, the caller’s userid (IZUSVR) is not the associated with the certificate (COLIN) so this fails, and the logic drops through to the RDATALIB checking.
    • The caller’s user ID has READ or UPDATE authority to the ..LST resource in the RDATALIB class. READ access enables retrieving one’s own private key, UPDATE access enables retrieving other’s. The ring did not exist, and so this access was not given.

How did I debug this? – Using Java trace

Adding configuration to z/OSMF

I copied /global/zosmf/configuration/local_override.cfg to /global/zosmf/configuration/local_override.colin

I edited/global/zosmf/configuration/local_override.cfg and changes the JVM options line to

JVM_OPTIONS=”-Xoptionsfile=’/global/zosmf/configuration/local_override.colin'”

I edited the local_override.colin, deleted all but the JVM options line, then split the line at \n so it looks like

-Dcom.ibm.ws.classloading.tcclLockWaitTimeMillis=300000
-Xscmx150M
-Xquickstart

Add debug information to the configuraton file

I added

-Djava.security.auth.debug=pkcs11keystore
-Dlog.level=Error

The output

[err] Jan 17, 2025 8:18:52 AM com.ibm.crypto.ibmjcehybrid.provider.HybridRACFKeyStore engineLoad 
TRACE: Loading keyring CCPKeyring.IZUDFLT as a JCECCARACFKS type keystore.
...
[err] Jan 17, 2025 8:19:02 AM com.ibm.crypto.hdwrCCA.provider.RACFInputStream getEntry
FINER: The private key of NISTEC224 is not available or no authority to access the private key
[err] Jan 17, 2025 8:19:02 AM com.ibm.crypto.ibmjcehybrid.provider.HybridRACFKeyStore engineLoad
TRACE: Error loading and storing certificates and key material from underlying JCECCARACFKS keyring CCPKeyring.IZUDFLT
java.io.IOException: The private key of NISTEC224 is not available or no authority to access the private key . This can be expected if the IBMJCECCA is not setup correctly or
ICSF is down. Will now attempt to load the keyring as a JCERACFKS keyring.

Which is not a very helpful message.

How did I debug this? – Using RACF trace

R_datalib is the callable service to ALL the exploiters which need access to a RACF keyring (certificates and private keys). It is r_datalib or its alias irrsdl00 with callable type number 41.

Enable the RACF trace

#SET TRACE(CALLABLE(TYPE(41))JOBNAME(IZU*))

Start GTF

S GTF.GTF,M=GTFRACF

This reported

IEF403I GTF - STARTED - TIME=08.17.03                                  
IEF188I PROBLEM PROGRAM ATTRIBUTES ASSIGNED
AHL121I TRACE OPTION INPUT INDICATED FROM MEMBER GTFRACF OF PDS
USER.Z24C.PROCLIB
TRACE=USRP
USR=(F44)
END
AHL103I TRACE OPTIONS SELECTED --USR=(F44)
AHL906I THE OUTPUT BLOCK SIZE OF 27998 WILL BE USED FOR OUTPUT 702
DATA SETS:
SYS1.TRACE

I started z/OSMF until it failed.

Stop GTF

p GTF 
AHL006I GTF ACKNOWLEDGES STOP COMMAND
AHL904I THE FOLLOWING TRACE DATASETS CONTAIN TRACE DATA :
SYS1.TRACE

Use IPCS to look at the dump, using command GTF USR(ALL). Go to the bottom of the output, use the command report view. This gives an ISPF edit session.

  • x all
  • f ‘RACF Reason code:’ all
    • You are interested in the non zero codes. “Label” each line of interest using the line prefix command .a, .b etc.
  • reset
  • loc .a
    • This will position you by the labelled line. Look up the RACF return and reason codes here. I had Reason Code 2c, which is decimal 44. Look for the keyring, or other information. I do not know which data tells you which sub operation r_datalib was doing, but for me it had the keyring name “CCPKeyring.IZUDFLT “. The description in the reason code documentation does not cover the situation of not having update access to the keyring, so I’ve raised a doc comment on it.

Whoops I just used the wrong 3270 window.

For my z/OS system, I have multiple 3270 session. For example one has an all powerful userid, one has my normal userid, and one has a userid with no authority. I usually position them left to right so it is obvious which session I am using.

I recently had an incident where I disconnected my external monitor, used z/OS, then reconnected my external monitor. The 3270 sessions were not in their usual places, and I used the right hand session to do something, to find I was using the all powerful userid.

I’ve now fixed this by using

x3270 -model 5 -bd red tso@localhost:3270 &

where -bd red says give the window a red border. Of course if I do not look at the border, it will not help – but I hope it will.

My session now looks like

If you display the x3270 options, you will not find -bd mentioned. x3270 uses some of xterm, which has options which include:

  • -bd color This option specifies the color to use for the border of the window. The default is “black.”
  • -bg color This option specifies the color to use for the background of the window. The default is “white.”
  • -bw number This option specifies the width in pixels of the border surrounding the window.
  • -fg color This option specifies the color to use for displaying text. The default is “black.”
  • -fn font This option specifies the font to be used for displaying normal text. The default is fixed.
  • -name name This option specifies the application name under which resources are to be obtained, rather than the default executable file name. Name should not contain “.” or “*” characters.
  • -rv This option indicates that reverse video should be simulated by swapping the foreground and background colors.
  • +rv Disable the simulation of reverse video by swapping foreground and background colors.
  • -title string This option specifies the window title string, which may be displayed by window managers if the user so chooses. The default title is the command line specified after the -e option, if any, otherwise the application name.

Using and debugging RACF CLASS(APPL) and pthread_security_np

I’ve blogged I want to be someone else – or using pthread_security_np, how a server can be passed a userid or password to logon to a server to do some work. For example I was logging on from a web server to the RMF GPMSERVE for displaying RMF reports in a a web browser.

I had followed the documentation, but all my userids had access, when none of them should have done. This blog post covers the steps I used to dig into this.

The RACF calls used, have a flag set “Suppress any RACF Messages”, which makes it harder to diagnose problems.

With most RACF calls you can define a profile

ADDSD 'COLIN.PROT.DATASET' UACC(NONE) WARNING

where the WARNING option says “If the userid does not have access – give the userid access, but write a message on the console”. This allows you to find when you need to grant access. Once the profile is established, you can use the ALTSD … NOWARNING. Userids requesting access, but which are not permitted will now fail.

Defining a profile with CLASS(APPL), the warning has no effect. I had to use NOTIFY(COLIN) to get notified of problems.

Tracing the requests

To trace all of the RACF calls made by my job COLINNT I issued

#set trace(callable(all),racroute(all),jobname(COLINNT))      

This gave me many hundreds of calls.

Once I had been through the whole process, I found the trace for the pthread_security_np etc calls was just

set trace(callable(type(38)),jobname(COLINNT))

Collect a trace

See Collecting and understanding a RACF GTF trace output.

Looking at the trace output

There is a trace record “before” (PRE) matching “after” (POST). Many parameters are the same (as you might expect).

The output of these traces is verbose, with unnecessary information and with extra blanks lines. For example for one parameter

   Area length:                  00000008 

Area value:
D6C6C6E2 C5E30000 | OFFSET.. |

Area length: 00000004

Area value:
00000000 | .... |

Area length: 00000008

In the description below, I’ve squashed this down to a single line

area length  8  OFFSET0000 length 4 00000000 

It looks like the field OFFSET0000 has the offset in hex from somewhere. I didn’t find this information useful.

A compressed trace record is given below. For the interpretation of the fields see the following trace record.

RTRACE
OMVSPRE
Service number 00000026
Parameters
area length x6c
area length 8 OFFSET0000 length 4 00000000
area length 8 OFFSET0004 length 4 00000000
area length 8 OFFSET0008 length 4 00000000
area length 8 OFFSET000C length 4 00000000
area length 8 OFFSET0010 length 4 40404040
area length 8 OFFSET0014 length 4 00000000
area length 8 OFFSET0018 length 4 40404040
area length 8 OFFSET001C length 1 01
area length 8 OFFSET0020 length 4 C4800000
area length 8 OFFSET0024 length 6 05c1c2c3c4C2 = .ABCDB
area length 8 OFFSET0028 length 4 00000000
area length 8 OFFSET002C length 9 08C7D7D4 E2C5D9E5 C5 = .GPMSERVE
Internal information
area length 8 OFFSET0034 length x37 = "Server Userid=IBMUSER created a full ACEE"
area length 8 OFFSET0048 length 4 00000000
area length 8 OFFSET0050 length 9 08000000 00000000 00
area length 8 OFFSET0054 length 1 00
area length 8 OFFSET0018 length 4 40404040
Internal data
area length xc0 ACEE
area length x50 userid information
area length x90 ACEX
area length x50 USP

hex dump of record

The RACF commands documentation says for a callable service, 0x00000026 is function number for IRRSIA00. This page gives the name of the function name IRRSIA00 and the description z/OS kernel on behalf of servers that use pthread_security_np servers or __login, or MVS servers that do not use z/OS UNIX services.

The parameters are for the initACEE (IRRSIA00) call.

The matching “after” record, OMVSPOST was (with the parameters of the the IRRSIA00 call format, parameters) are

RTRACE
OMVSPOST
Service number: 00000026
RACF Return code: 00000008
RACF Reason code: 00000020

Parameters
area length 8 OFFSET0000 length 4 00000000 >work_area<
area length 8 OFFSET0004 length 4 00000000 >ALET<
area length 8 OFFSET0008 length 4 00000008 >SAF_return_code<
area length 8 OFFSET000C length 4 00000000 >ALET<
area length 8 OFFSET0010 length 4 00000008 >RACF_return_code<
area length 8 OFFSET0014 length 4 00000000 >ALET<
area length 8 OFFSET0018 length 4 00000020 >RACF_reason_code<
area length 8 OFFSET001C length 1 01 >Function_code 1 = Create an ACEE<
area length 8 OFFSET0020 length 4 C4800000 >Attributes - see below<
area length 8 OFFSET0024 length 6 05c1c2c3c4C2 >Userid .ABCDB<
area length 8 OFFSET0028 length 4 00000000 >ACEE_pointer<
area length 8 OFFSET002C length 9 08C7D7D4 E2C5D9E5 C5 >APPLID = .GPMSERVE<
Internal information
area length 8 OFFSET0034 length x37 = "Server Userid=IBMUSER created a full ACEE"
area length 8 OFFSET0048 length 4 00000000
area length 8 OFFSET0050 length 9 08000000 00000000 00
area length 8 OFFSET0054 length 1 00
area length 8 OFFSET0018 length 4 40404040
Internal data
area length xc0 ACEE
area length x50 userid information
area length x90 ACEX
area length x50 USP

There the attributes C480000 mean

  • X80000000 – Create the ACEE
  • X40000000 – Createthe USP for the userid
  • X04000000 – Suppress any RACF Messages
  • X00800000 – Return an OUSP in the output area

Note the flag:X04000000 – Suppress any RACF Messages.

The return code

area length  8  OFFSET0008 length 4 00000008 >SAF_return_code<
...
area length 8 OFFSET0010 length 4 00000008 >RACF_return_code<
area length 8 OFFSET0014 length 4 00000000 >ALET<
area length 8 OFFSET0018 length 4 00000020 >RACF_reason_code<

8,8,32 means The user does not have appropriate RACF access to either the SECLABEL, SERVAUTH profile, or APPL specified in the parmlist.

For other RACF services the trace entries follow a similar format.

Tracing encrypted data to z/OS

I had blogged Collecting a wire-shark trace with TLS active for a browser where you could specify an environment variable export SSLKEYLOGFILE=$HOME/sslkeylog.log. OpenSSL would write the key to this file, and Wireshark could decrypt the traffic using this data.

Unfortunately this only worked with RSA keys. I could not get it to work with modern Elliptic Curve keys.

I’ve updated my zWireshark program to capture AT-TLS application data in clear text from the z/OS side. It uses an IBM provided API, and captures the traffic between AT-TLS and the application.

You need to set up security profiles, for example

permit  EZB.TRCSEC.*.*.ATTLS            - 
CL(SERVAUTH) id(ADCDB) access(READ)
permit EZB.TRCCTL.S0W1.TCPIP.DATTRACE -
CL(SERVAUTH) id(ADCDB) access(READ)
permit EZB.TRCCTL.S0W1.TCPIP.OPEN -
CL(SERVAUTH) id(ADCDB) access(READ)
permit EZB.TRCCTL.*.*.* CL(SERVAUTH) id(ADCDB) access(READ)
SETROPTS RACLIST(SERVAUTH) refresh

and change the AT-TLS configuration to include CtraceClearText On

For my web browser traffic it produced (printed with the ASCII switch)

Data trace.  Data length 345.  ATTLS Clear Text.                             
<GPMSERVE 11:01:57.258946 Src 10.1.1.2 Port 8803 Dst 10.1.0.2 Port 45168
Warning: 199 RMF-DDS-Server SeverityCode(03) Data(0)
Content-Location: perform_20250102110157_20250102110157.xml
Cache-Control: max-age=30
Date: Thu, 02 Jan 2025 11:01:57 GMT
Connection: close
Content-Length: 1468
Content-Type: application/xml
X-UA-Compatible: IE=edge
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block

When the AT-TLS option CtraceClearText was Off, the output was

Data trace.  Data length 0.  PTH_Flag.Confidential.                           
<GPMSERVE 11:27:48.733616 Src 10.1.1.2 Port 8803 Dst 10.1.0.2 Port 52860

So no confidential data was displayed.

The JCL is

//COLINC5    JOB 1,MSGCLASS=H,COND=(4,LE) 
// SET LOADLIB=COLIN.ZWIRESHA.LOAD
//RUN EXEC PGM=TCPDATA,REGION=0M,PARMDD=MYPARMS
//STEPLIB DD DISP=SHR,DSN=&LOADLIB
//SYSPRINT DD SYSOUT=*,DCB=(LRECL=200)
//SYSOUT DD SYSOUT=*
//SYSERR DD SYSOUT=*
//* MYPARMS needs a / to split LE parms from program parms
//* needs a blank before each parm, because trailing blanks removed
//MYPARMS DD *
/
--IP 10.1.0.2
--WAIT 60
--DEBUG 0
--DISCARD 1
--PRINT A
/*

Please let me know of any problems or suggestions

I want to be someone else – or using pthread_security_np

There are times when you are running a job, and you want to do some work as a different userid.

You can configure a userid so it acts as a surrogate – I can submit jobs with your userid, without knowing your password.

You can have a server and have a thread within the server run as different userid by specifying a userid and password, using the pthread_security_applid_np function. You can also have it logon using a certificate, and it looks up the userid from the certificate.

You can extend/restrict this by specifying an RACF APPL which the user must have access to.

RDEFINE APPL YYYY 
PERMIT  CLASS(APPL) YYYY ID(COLIN) ACCESS(READ) 
SETROPTS RACLIST(appl ) REFRESH

My job running with userid IBMUSER specifies a userid COLIN, and COLIN’s password. If applid YYYY is specified, userid COLIN must have read access to the YYYY in CLASS(APPL).

If you use pthread_security_np() is the same as pthread_security_applid_np() and uses the default OMVSAPPL.

My example C program is

Main

int main( int argc, char *argv[]) 
{ 
  pthread_t thid; 
  int rc; 
  void *ret; 
  if (pthread_create(&thid, NULL, thread, "thread 1") != 0) { 
    perror("pthread_create() error"); 
    exit(1); 
  } 
  rc =pthread_join(thid, &ret); 
  printf("Pthread join %d\n",rc); 
  if (rc  != 0) { 
 // perror("pthread_create() error"); 
 // return(3); 
  } 
  printf("thread exited with '%s'\n", ret); 
  return 0  ; 
} 

  #pragma runopts(POSIX(ON)) 
  /*Include standard libraries */ 
  #include <stdio.h> 
  #include <stdlib.h> 
  #include <string.h> 
  #include <stdarg.h> 
  #include <errno.h> 
  #define _OPEN_SYS 1 
  #include <pthread.h> 
                                                                    
  void *thread(void *arg) { 
  char *ret = ""; 
  int rc; 
  printf("thread() entered with argument '%s'\n", arg); 
  rc = pthread_security_applid_np(__CREATE_SECURITY_ENV, 
              __USERID_IDENTITY, 
              5, 
              "COLIN", 
              "PASSW0RD", 
              0,"AAAA"); 
  perror("perror"); 
  printf("colin rc = %d errno %d\n",rc,errno); 
  if (rc == 0) 
  { 
     FILE * f2  ; 
     f2 = fopen("DD:TEST","r                      ") ; 
     printf("DD:TEST  %d\n",f2); 
   } 
  pthread_exit(ret); 
  } 



int main( int argc, char *argv[]) 
{ 
  pthread_t thid; 
  int rc; 
  void *ret; 
  if (pthread_create(&thid, NULL, thread, "thread 1") != 0) { 
    perror("pthread_create() error"); 
    exit(1); 
  } 
  rc =pthread_join(thid, &ret); 
  printf("Pthread join %d\n",rc); 
  if (rc  != 0) { 
    perror("pthread_create() error"); 
   return(3); 
  } 
  printf("thread exited with '%s'\n", ret); 
  return 0  ; 
} 

When the above program ran it gave me

ICH408I USER(COLIN   ) GROUP(SYS1    ) NAME(COLIN PAICE         ) 
  IBMUSER.TRY.PEM CL(DATASET ) VOL(C4USR1)                        
  INSUFFICIENT ACCESS AUTHORITY                                   
  ACCESS INTENT(READ   )  ACCESS ALLOWED(NONE   )                 

which shows that the userid COLIN was used.

EDC5167I Access to the UNIX System Services version of the C RTL is denied. (errno2=0xC10F0001 C10F0001) .

You cannot use the pthread_security… functions in the main thread. You have to attach a subtask using pthread_create().

EDC5143I No such process. (errno2=0x0BE80000 0BE80000)

Invalid userid specified.

EDC5111I Permission denied. (errno2=0x0BE80000 0BE80000)
Invalid password.

EDC5163I SAF/RACF extract error. (errno2=0x0BE8081C 0BE8081C)

Revoked userid.

EDC5168I Password has expired. (errno2=0x0BE80000 0BE80000)

Obvious.

EDC5163I SAF/RACF extract error. (errno2=0x0BE80820 0BE80820)

No OMVS segment, or the new user does not have access to the specified applid class.

rc = pthread_security_np() defaults to pthread_security_applid_np() with an applid of OMVSAPPL

ICH70004I 
ATTEMPTED 'READ' ACCESS OF USER(ADCDE) GROUP(TEST) NAME(ADCDE) ENTITY 'OMVSAPPL' IN CLASS 'APPL' 

EDC5139I Operation not permitted. (errno2=0x0BE802AF 0BE802AF)

ICH420I PROGRAM CERT FROM LIBRARY COLIN.LOAD CAUSED THE ENVIRONMENT TO
BECOME UNCONTROLLED.
BPXP014I ENVIRONMENT MUST BE CONTROLLED FOR SERVER (BPX.SERVER)
PROCESSING.

Needed

RALTER PROGRAM CERT ADDMEM('COLIN.LOAD'//NOPADCHK)
SETROPTS WHEN(PROGRAM) REFRESH

Python could not read a data set I sent from z/OS USS.

I created a file in Unix System Services, and FTPed it down to my Linux box. I could edit it, and process it with no problems, until I came to read in the file using Python.

Python gave me

File “<frozen codecs>”, line 322, in decode
UnicodeDecodeError: ‘utf-8’ codec can’t decode byte 0xb8 in position 3996: invalid start byte

The Linux command file pagentn.txt gave me

pagentn.txt: ISO-8859 text

whereas other files had ASCII text.

I changed my Python program to have

with open(“/home/colinpaice/python/pagentn.txt”,encoding=”ISO-8859-1″) as file:

and it worked!

I browsed the web, and found a Python way of finding the code page of a file

import chardet    
rawdata = open(infile, 'rb').read()
result = chardet.detect(rawdata)
charenc = result['encoding']

it returned a dict with

result {‘encoding’: ‘ISO-8859-1’, ‘confidence’: 0.73, ‘language’: ”}